“You don't have these strong statistical numbers, underlying numbers, especially the goal differential, unless you are a very good hockey team."
Lightning General Manager Julien BriseBois met with media members on Monday for his annual mid-season availability.
Tampa Bay has had a jam-packed month of January, having played 14 games in just 24 days before heading home to play their last two. The team has had four sets of back-to-back games with two of those happening in a quick six-day span.
Still the Lightning have played fewer games than every team ahead of them in the standings. They currently hold the second Wild Card spot with Columbus following closely behind.
At the end of December, Tampa Bay had the highest points percentage in the Atlantic Division at .638%, followed by Toronto and Florida. In January, they saw that number drop, losing 8 of their 10 games on the road. With the most intense part of the schedule over, the expectation from BriseBois is that the results will improve.
"Now the toughest part of our schedule is behind us,” BriseBois said. "I think two days of rest here is going to do our players a world of good. We have a number of home games coming up the second half of the season. That’s going to help as well. And we’ve always been a process-over-outcome mentality. That’s what we’ve always preached is process over outcome. And I think this season, if we stick with the process, the results will come.”
Right now the Lightning have the third best goal differential and are a Top 10 team in every major statistical category. When you look at the numbers in the first 48 games of the season, they should probably be higher in the standings than what they're showing.
“The guys are gassed, and it’s going to affect their execution,” BriseBois said. “It hasn’t affected their effort. They are giving us everything they have every game. They’re competing their butts off, and they’re doing a lot of good things, enough good things that we should be winning more games than we had in the past little stretch here, and it’s been disappointing to see our players play as well as they have and do as many good things as they’ve been doing night in and night out and not being rewarded for their efforts.”
The last time Tampa Bay was a Top 10 team in each of these categories, they won a record 62 games in the 2018-19 season and made their third-straight Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2021-22.
“You don't have these strong statistical numbers, underlying numbers, especially the goal differential, unless you are a very good hockey team made up of very good hockey players, that are very well coached,” said BriseBois
“So if we are a very good hockey team and we have very good underlying numbers, why isn't our record better? I think part of the explanation is simply the randomness of individual game results over the course of a hockey season."
"Last season when we lost, it felt like we didn't play well and deserved to lose. That was the feeling as we were leaving the rink," said BriseBois. "This year when we lose, most of the time, we're leaving the rink thinking we did a lot of good things, probably enough good things, we played well enough to win. I think if we continue to play this way, we're in line for some positive regression in the second half.”
Even without their former captain Steven Stamkos, the Tampa Bay power play is still ranked fourth in the league at 27.9%. Their 5-on-5 goals for/against, which was a major focus for BriseBois in the offseason is back to being Top 10 in the league.
"I think right now, we have the record of a good team and the underlying statistics of a very good hockey team,” said BriseBois
When asked if anything was off the table heading into the March 7th NHL trade deadline, BriseBois said no.
“We're trying to accomplish difficult, challenging, hard things here, and we can't limit ourselves in terms of what we're willing to do to accomplish those great things.”
Unlike in recent years, the Lightning have cap space available that they've been able to accrue by playing with just 18 skaters for the past month or so.
“We’re on the lookout,” BriseBois said. “We’ll see what’s out there. If anything makes sense and I think it improves our chances of winning a Stanley Cup, we’re going to be making that trade if it’s out there.”