The Lightning are coming off an emotional win against Montreal. The playoff hunt is very much in session to start the new year.
The Tampa Bay Lightning will start the new year off with a road matchup against the Winnipeg Jets. The Bolts are coming off an emotional win on New Year’s Eve where they fought back from a two-goal deficit. After a questionable goal and some physicality dished out by the Canadiens, the Lightning scored four straight to defeat Montreal 4-3.
It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride so far this season, but here’s my take on where the team is currently.
When emotions are high, the Lightning play their best hockey
As we saw in their wins against Vegas and Montreal, the Lightning play their best when they’re angry. They’ve always been a team that plays with emotion, but this season has come with new adversity.
When Brandon Hagel stood up for his buddy Anthony Cirelli against a favored Vegas team, it flipped a switch. The crowd at Amalie Arena went wild and the team was relentless. Now it’s just a matter of digging deep and finding that feeling consistently. If they can string together a few wins, they can get back to that.
They have to find that winning feeling again
There’s no question that the Lightning have dominated for the past decade. If you disagree with that, you probably haven’t been watching the NHL.
This season has been a bit different as they welcomed new players, temporarily lost Andrei Vasilevskiy to back surgery and made changes to their defensive structure. Naturally, those changes have come with growing pains. It's not so much the losses in general, but more so how they're losing that can suck the momentum out of the game. Small errors are making a massive difference this season. Depending on the night, you can catch a glimpse of the team we’ve all known over the years and when it happens, it's magical.
The talent to win is still there and we saw it most notably in the games against Boston, Carolina and Vegas. There’s still time to work their season out but the window is a little more narrow to start the new year. Would I ever count them out? No. But again, it's crunch time.
They can’t just rely on out-scoring opponents
It sounds cliche but offense wins games, defense wins championships.
When the Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cups, they were known for being relentless on defense. Over the past couple of seasons, we’ve seen that slip. Oftentimes this season, the other team has a clear line right to the front of the net, which makes it incredibly difficult to stop the puck.
Currently, the Lightning have the league leader in points in Nikita Kucherov paired with one of the strongest cores in the game, but in order to stay competitive, they can’t solely rely on out-scoring opponents. They have to get back to what they know works. When that happens, the confidence will likely follow.