TAMPA’S TERRIFIC TRIO LOOKS TO CATCH LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE AGAIN AFTER SHOCKING THE LEAGUE A SEASON AGO
THEY CELEBRATED their first birthday in late October, the 24th to be exact. But there was no cake. Knowing these guys, they would have just kept passing the pieces to each other and nobody would have had any. But it’s an event worth celebrating. It’s not often in today’s NHL you get a line that lasts that long. It’s not often today you get a line that lasts more than a couple games. The Production Line (Lindsay-Abel-Howe), the Punch Line (Blake-Lach-Richard), the French Connection (Martin-Perreault-Robert), the GAG Line (Hadfield-Ratelle-Gilbert), the Kraut Line (Dumart-Schmidt-Bauer), they all played at a time when you could drill a guy’s bare head into the glass without fear of reprisal.
They don’t make lines like that anymore. That is, they didn’t until early last season when Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper looked down his bench in Winnipeg and realized he only had 10 forwards.
The Jets had been throwing their weight around, and before the end of the first period, J.T. Brown had taken a hit from Chris Thorburn and Brett Connolly had been rubbed out by Andrew Ladd. Neither right winger was available for the rest of the game, so Cooper had to get creative.
In a move that was hockey’s equivalent to Wally Pipp being replaced by Lou Gehrig, Cooper put the left-shooting Nikita Kucherov in Connolly’s spot on a line centered by Tyler Johnson and left-flanked by Ondrej Palat.
The record will show the Triplets were born between the 17:53 and 18:02 marks of the second period that night in Winnipeg, the result of a screwed up icing call that placed the faceoff at center ice. Johnson cleanly wins the draw on the backhand over Adam Lowry of the Jets. Lightning defenseman Anton Stralman, with Winnipeg's T.J. Galiardi in hot pursuit, goes back to his zone to retrieve it and quickly fires the puck off the boards out of his zone.
Then the magic happens.
Kucherov, who is in a perfect support position, executes a no-look tip between his legs with his back to the play, which immediately catches Jets defenseman Tobias Enstrom pinching in the middle of the ice and makes him the star of the Jets video the next day entitled, About Last Night: The Anatomy of a Whuppin’. The puck lands on Johnson’s stick at the red line, and he enters the zone with all kinds of speed, with only Jets defenseman Zach Bogosian between him and the goal.
The right-shot Johnson feathers a saucer pass on his forehand to Palat, who snaps it past Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec for a 4-1 lead in what would become a 4-2 victory for the Lightning. “It was an injury thing, so I can’t sit here and say, ‘Oh, I had this unbelievable foresight that these guys were going to work together,’ ” Cooper said, “but I was smart enough to keep them together.”
It was almost as though from that moment, Palat, Johnson and Kucherov have had some sort of uncanny kinship that gives them a sense of where each other is on the ice at all times. How else do you explain Kucherov tipping it between his legs to Johnson? It’s a scene that played itself over and over again last season and has continued into this one.
There was no better line in hockey last season to the eyeballs of the seasoned hockey pundits, or among the analytics crowd, than the Triplets. No line scored as many goals or had more of an impact, and no unit embedded itself into the consciousness of hockey fans the way this one did. In an era when twosomes seem to be all the rage, with a third interloper moving in and out of the mix, the Triplets have found a comfort zone and level of success that has them solidly on the lineup board for the Lightning and their opponents, usually as the second unit behind Steven Stamkos and whoever it is that he’s playing with these days. “In Kuch’s rookie year, he didn’t play with us, and I spoke maybe two words to him that year,” Johnson said. “It’s been fun to get to know him. I love playing with him, and I love having him around.”
THREE'S COMPANY
Palat, Johnson and Kucherov carry their bond off the ice. All three lived in the same condo complex last season before Palat went out and bought himself a house. But Palat settling down is not a case of “Jimmy quit, Jody got married,” for the three. They still hang out off the ice, usually going for sushi at Kucherov’s suggestion. “They’re all unreal friends, so it’s not like they come to the rink and then all take off away from each other,” Cooper said.
Johnson and Palat have had a comfort level that goes back to their days in the minors, where they also played for Cooper and had a ton of success. In fact, this season marks the fifth straight that Palat and Johnson have been linemates. That they have meshed with Kucherov, who plays his off-wing and the role of the strong, silent type of the group, is a testament to the unselfish nature of both their games. “Our lines are changing all the time except for us,” Johnson said. “It’s kind of weird. I even noticed it in camp this year. ‘Pally’ and I were together for a couple of (pre-season) games, and Kuch wasn’t there and it felt weird. I remember having lines in the past, and you don’t feel that weirdness, but for some reason it’s just kind of different not having both of them.”
Last season, the Triplets played 668 minutes of 5-on-5 hockey together, and they made the most of their time.
For the three players, it’s simply a matter of trust.