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Three Concerns from the Bolts' First Loss

October 6, 2019, 12:59 PM ET [9 Comments]
Sam Hitchcock
Tampa Bay Lightning Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Brayden Point’s return from injury won’t solve all the problems evident in the Lightning’s 4-3 defeat by the Florida Panthers last night.

Tampa Bay’s first two lines are struggling, which prompted coach Jon Cooper to respond by replacing Tyler Johnson with Ondrej Palat. The forward and defensive communication is off-kilter, resulting in odd-man rushes and opposing forwards left alone in front of the net. The Lightning accrued two more minor penalties than their opponent, and two of these penalties resulted in goals for Florida. Point’s debut should improve the first two difficulties, but the Lightning would be wise to address all issues now. The East is going to be very competitive, and it also is hardly assured that the Lightning will experience the same good health from their stars that they were blessed with last year.

Scoring Woes from the Top Six
The Panthers’ Pat Maroon-Gemel Smith-Luke Witkowski line generated the same amount of Scoring Chances at 5v5 (4) as the combined total from the Steven Stamkos-Johnson-Nikita Kucherov and Alex Killorn-Anthony Cirelli-Palat lines, per Naturalstattrick.com. That is atrocious! The problems are manifold. First, the Kucherov line saw the Panthers defensemen stepping up in the neutral zone and the Tampa Bay rush was once again eliminated for the Bolts’ stars. When the Kucherov line was forced to forecheck, they had limited success. The truth is that Johnson is just not that good a forechecker. Like his linemates, he is more effective on the rush and is more suited to playing above the goal line.

The Cirelli line has a different problem. They have three decent forecheckers, but no real shooters to exploit the territorial time when it is established. They accrued more shot attempts than the Kucherov line with Johnson, but few of them were quality ones. The answer is as obvious as it sounds. Pair the good forecheckers, the guys who thrive below the goal line, with the shooters, the guys who make their living above the goal line!

We don’t even have to use our imaginations to know this works. We literally saw the result, and it was a Lightning goal. On the four on four, Cirelli played with Stamkos, and Cirelli’s outstanding forecheck on Evgenii Dadonov forced a turnover. The Lightning defensemen were able to quickly circulate the puck to Stamkos on the dot for a one-timer goal.



I suspect Cooper’s fear is that, if he removes Cirelli from the second line, there will be a skill imbalance among the first two lines. But that fear is misplaced because he now has two lines adding far too little offense. At 5v5, some offense is better than no offense.

If Cirelli is put with Stamkos, Kucherov, or both, and Johnson is moved down to the second line, Cirelli, the Lightning’s best forechecker, can create turnovers that result in a scrambled defense for the opponent and open shooting lanes for Kucherov and/or Stamkos. Cirelli also can be a safety net for Stamkos and Kucherov on the other side of the ice, compensating for their defensive lapses.

Forwards-Defensemen Mayhem
Unfortunately, the embedded clip does not capture all of the footage of Hedman and Johnson gesticulating as to who exactly is going to pick up the F2 Dryden Hunt, but in real time it was a nice snapshot of the troubles the Lightning are having regarding who belongs where on defense.



Due to the confusion between Hedman and Johnson, Hunt easily wins the race to the puck, and then Colton Sceviour, who receives the pass from Hunt in the circle, sees two Bolts forwards converge on him on the fringes of the right circle. Unfortunately, Kevin Shattenkirk, who was busy peeling himself off the ice after a hit on the retrieval, traipses over to the low slot just as Noel Acciari is finishing off a deke. In both games this season, Shattenkirk has let his man beat him to the low slot, resulting in a goal. Additionally, the breakdown in communication between the forwards and defensemen is truly unsettling here as the Lightning rush to the perimeter while ceding the middle.

One thing the Lightning cannot seem to get right is their gaps. For two straight games, the Panthers managed to get behind the defense, although they converted far fewer times than they could have, mostly due to Andrei Vasilevskiy’s brilliance. But sometimes it wasn’t that the Panthers players were behind them, they just managed to get more separation than they should because the Lightning forwards were absent or their defense was late. On Mike Hoffman’s third goal, Hedman was there, but failed to take away Hoffman’s stick.

Discipline
The Lightning penalty kill was so good last season that regression is to be expected. The part that is irritating is the frequency of the infractions, especially relative to how many minor penalties their opponents make, and how avoidable the penalties are. The first minor was Too Many Men, which is a sloppy penalty, although the Lightning penalty kill staved that off. The Mathieu Joseph hooking play was lazy. When you get your stick blade on someone’s hands, nine times out of ten it is going to draw a call. And while the Cirelli infraction seemed soft, it was also foolish. The Lightning had just allowed a power play goal and were trailing. Why get chippy and risk putting your team down a man again?

I point the finger at Cooper. This team needs to be more disciplined. Far too often they lose their cool and do something stupid, or take an indolent penalty. It’s hard to tell whether it is a lack of accountability or an issue with focus, but it is a prevailing theme. Two games into the season, the Lightning are not at the top of the NHL in minor penalties, which is a small victory, but the truth is they cannot be surrendering more power plays to their opponents than they generate themselves.

The Lightning will be facing another tough opponent in Carolina tonight, and they can bet that the Hurricanes will be stingy with what they allow on the rush. If this is the case, they will need to be more accountable in their conduct and spatial awareness. That would at least help until the first two lines start producing at 5v5.
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