Last night’s 7-6 victory for the Lightning over the New Jersey Devils was wildly entertaining. It featured lead changes, sharp swings of emotion, and overall chaos. It reminded me a bit of watching youth hockey players before they understand the basic building blocks of the game. Everything is based on instinct. (Luke Schenn, especially, looked like the coach’s son who only made the team out of nepotism.) It was unclear whether either team had a game plan, or if at intermission the coaches went off and watched Netflix in a back room while the players rested.

Did anyone on the Lightning play well? Not really. Missing Victor Hedman and Erik Cernak promised to be problematic, but the spate of scoring chances by the Devils overwhelmed the senses. This is a game where Devils defenseman Andy Greene, who is the same age as one of the Democratic Presidential candidates, managed to get a breakaway. And from what I could tell, the Lightning weren’t even caught on a change!

By the third period, the Lightning forwards could not even feign interest in defense, which presented a serious problem for a defensive group forced to start Schenn and Jan Rutta. Free trade was back in vogue, as pucks were traded indiscriminately and puck-carriers given plenty of space. The Devils waltzed through the neutral zone with little pressure, and the Lightning caught a few breaks when Curtis McElhinney was beat, but the puck struck the post or crossbar.

I think it was during the Brayden Point goal that I realized the game was a cartoonish depiction of a zero-sum affair. For the Lightning to score, the Devils had to be humiliated. It was jarring to watch how easily the Lightning punctured New Jersey’s defense when they went up 3-2. Despite the Devils being in their defensive posture, with four players in the neutral zone and one at the top of the blue line chasing the puck-carrier, Mikhail Sergachev effortlessly made a pass through the middle of the neutral zone that allowed Ondrej Palat to coast in on the entry. That was the first red flag.

When Palat carried the puck to the right dot, he tried to slip it to Tyler Johnson in the slot but failed, and Palat recovered the loose puck with little resistance.



When Palat passed it to Sergachev at the point, the Lightning defenseman had plenty of space to find the shooting lane and put the puck near Johnson’s stick as a shooting target. Most miraculously, neither Devils defenseman seemed particularly interested in boxing out. Like young children with their eyes fixated on an iPad, Damon Severson and P.K. Subban watched the puck intently, yet with little concern for the man on offense they were responsible for neutralizing. Against teams that make efforts to defend, Johnson and Point, two of the Lightning’s smaller players, can get shoved around in the paint. Not the case in this sequence. Johnson managed to retrieve the puck in the low slot and tap it to Point.

But the Devils weren’t the only ones caught puck-watching or getting humiliated at times. On the Sami Vatanen goal, Jan Rutta and Steven Stamkos stood in the slot while Vatanen carried the puck from just above the right dot to the top of the crease and went forehand-to-backhand.



Despite Nikita Kucherov trailing Vatanen and unlikely to disrupt the Devils’ defenseman, neither Stamkos nor Rutta made an effort to impede Vatanen. It was that type of game.

For the Lightning, no line mixed joy with revulsion more than that of Palat, Point, and Johnson. They were porous on defense. They provided no support to their struggling defensemen and instead let the Hischier line attack with speed. According to Naturalstattrick.com, they allowed 5 Scoring Chances at 5v5, but you could have told me it was 15 and I would have believed it.

It was fitting that on the sixth goal by Palat that, despite Jesper Bratt faking Point out so badly he literally turned him around, Bratt’s deke proved so impressive that he temporarily lost control of the puck in the slot and was forced to pass it to the point to Subban, who proceeded to break his stick on a slap shot. This allowed Point the transition opportunity he needed to carry the puck in the offensive zone and feed it to Palat, who somehow scored off a turn-around shot from the off-slot. The Mathieu Joseph goal was an even more intense version of the Devils shredding the Lightning defense only for the Lightning to counterattack and score. It isn’t sustainable hockey, but it worked last night.

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