Former Tampa Bay Lightning head coach John Tortorella caught some social media attention yesterday when he suggested that Connor McDavid is going to have to change the way he plays if he wants to have success in the playoffs.
Most people seemed to view Tortorella’s comments as a slight at McDavid, though I viewed them a little bit differently. Thanks to the way the NHL decides to manage games in the regular season vs. the postseason, the reality is that teams *aren’t* going to fill the net in the playoffs like they can in the regular season. The rulebook gets thrown out the window, which puts a significant burden on the skilled players and teams that *should* be in the best position to reach the top of hockey’s highest mountain. The NHL consistently does a disservice to the entertainment value of its product by allowing clutch and grab hockey to stall players like McDavid when the lights shine brightest.
As Tortorella made his comments, it was difficult not to draw parallels with the 2018-19 (and previous iterations, really) Lightning and the 2020 team that finally earned the Stanley Cup win. There is no doubt that the Bolts boasted one of the league’s deepest and most talented rosters for the better part of the last half-decade. That they were consistently thwarted in the playoffs previously is, at least in my mind, partially attributable to the way the rulebook changes when the calendar flips to the postseason.
Consider the historically good 2018-19 Lightning, who put together an almost unprecedented 62-win regular season campaign. They were the best team in the league by a country mile, steamrolling opponents with relative ease while having the benefit of the league’s best goaltender between the pipes. You don’t need this blogger to remind you of what happened when the postseason began; Tortorella’s own Columbus Blue Jackets suffocated those Bolts with boring, no-space hockey that sent Tampa Bay home in four straight contests.
So, did the Lightning learn to play a different way following that devastating defeat? I think most people who watched the next season’s bubble run would suggest that they did. The eye test painted a picture of a team that was more committed to team defence, a team that was willing to generate a little less if it meant giving up a lot less. The numbers tell a similar story:
(Numbers courtesy of Natural Stat Trick)
In at least some sense, those numbers would suggest that John Tortorella’s words ring true. It didn’t take the same high-flying, give-and-take style of the 2018-19 regular season to capture the Cup in 2020. It took a more disciplined and chess-match-like approach to finally get the job done.
Where Tortorella might have things at least a little bit wrong, though, is when he says that McDavid is the one who has to change. The championship Lightning teams still relied heavily on absurdly frequent offensive contributions from players like Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point. They didn’t ask those players to become half-point-per game players or penalty killing superstars; Jon Cooper continued to let his stars be stars.
What changed instead was the team-wide approach to succeeding in the playoffs, not the approach of a single player. As long as the NHL is content to let its game and product differ when the postseason begins, McDavid’s Oilers may need to do something similar if they want to find success. McDavid can still be McDavid, but the Oilers probably can't continue to be the Oilers.
As always, thanks for reading.
Tampa Bay Lightning Blogger • 
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