By Michael Wax
The Tampa Bay Lightning had an interesting final road game of preseason, falling to the Carolina Hurricanes 2-1 in OT.
While the two teams exchanged scoring chances for most of the game, the Lightning could never get sustained zone pressure and iced the puck quite a bit. Here are three things we learned from the loss:
Flamed Out
In a game filled with penalties from both sides, the Lightning had their fair share of opportunities on the man and advantage. While they didn’t have most of the players that you would consider to be on their top power-play unit, this was a perfect opportunity for guys either on the second power-play unit or not on the power-play at all during the regular season to showcase. Off-season work and potentially earn either a promotion or a spot. Unfortunately, they did neither.
The Lightning power play went 0/4, a really ugly number that gets even uglier when you consider the majority of the time, they weren’t even correctly set up in the zone. The Hurricanes, for all intents and purposes, I got more dangerous opportunities shorthanded.
One player who struggled in particular was Anthony Cirelli. He did score a goal at 5-on-5 but was looked upon as a leader on this squad that was missing many of its higher-echelon players. He had a tough time on the power play, not generating a ton of scoring chances and often being the one who needed to be the last line of defense against Carolina’s attacks.
Strength in Numbers
On the flip side, the penalty kill was fantastic. Once again, the Lightning had a game where they held the opposition off the score sheet while on the main disadvantage, going 5/5 on the PK against a Carolina team with a decent amount of their regulars in the lineup.
The Lightning had certain regulars on the penalty kill, such as Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel, but also had new faces like the Zemgud Girgensons and J.J. Moser. The new guys seem to fit right into the penalty-killing style that the Lightning have implemented in what has been a top-five penalty-killing unit for nearly half a decade.
Aside from the Orlando game, where they gave up three goals on the penalty kill, the PK has shown up this season.
The Boogeyman
At some point, the Lightning will have to be on the other side of the coin flip that is overtime.
It seems like every time the Lightning go to three-on-three overtime, or just overtime in general, they’re the ones that end up on the other side of the score sheet. It’s happened twice in the preseason. It happened in game two of the first-round series against the Florida Panthers, and the Bolts also went 4-7 in overtime games during the regular season last year.
It doesn’t feel like the Lightning are struggling to adapt to a format that has been around for a while. Maybe they are. But in a wild game like hockey, where it’s over, overtime can be decided by a coin flip; they have come out on the short end of the stick so many times recently.
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