By Michael Wax
The Lightning won their fourth in a row for the first time all season,
Here are three things we saw from the win:
Firsts
You could just see it coming.
After admittedly struggling in his first few games this season, Gage Goncalves seems to be finding his footing at the right time. Although he only scored one point in his first 17 games this season and his first-name games overall in the NHL, his recent play against Calgary and Seattle led to a more optimistic view of a rookie who struggled early on.
In this game, he finally picked up his first NHL goal after displaying a few excellent chances in recent games. After Nikita Kucherov found himself entering the zone with the puck, he dropped it back to Goncalves, who beat Blues’ goaltender Jordan Binnington with a perfectly placed shot.
Goncalves even surprised himself with his nice goal.
The talk around the young players this season, justifiably, has been around Conor Geekie. But if the Lightning can get another young scorer in Goncalves, they are in much better shape going forward.
Bending Not Breaking
Make that back-to-back games with the Lightning having substandard finishes to wins.
A win is a win, and two points are two points, but the leading have not played well to finish out our recent games against the blue jackets and now the blues. After getting outscored 3-0 and outshot 17-7 versus Columbus on Tuesday, the Lightning responded by once again getting outshot in the third period of this game as well, this time by a margin of 10-3. The only reason the Lightning didn’t give up any goals in the third period was due to the excellent play of Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Perhaps the recent rash of injuries is finally catching up to the Bolts and the way that they need their guys to play very hard to mask these injuries is leading to more tired individuals towards the end of games. But wild this trend is only two games long, it doesn’t bode well for future tilts like this weekend’s against Florida.
Stop the Bleeding
The Lightning have been decimated by injury this year, but not the long-term injuries that you might think.
Key players have missed time with nagging things that have kept them out of the lineup from anywhere from one to five games. Unfortunately, the Bolts were dealt their first big blow when it came to long-term injuries earlier today.
After sustaining a lower-body injury against the Calgary Flames and missing the next two subsequent games, it was announced that defenseman JJ Moser will be out 8-10 weeks with his lower-body injury. While no further detail was given, it was clear that things didn’t look good when Moser had initially left against Calgary.
Moser had been one of the few surprising individuals during this early season window, playing exceptional defense, and occasionally racking up some points as well. For the first time since Jan Ruta was a member of the Lightning,
Key players are going to have to step up in Moser’s absence. Darren Raddysh is most likely going to take over that spot in the lineup. Emil Lilleberg, Declan Carlile, and Nick Perbix (and a potentially returning soon Max Crozier) will be forced to not only pick up the slack, but play a little out of their depths at times. For the first time in a long-term sense this season, the Lightning’s depth is going to be truly tested.
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