The race for the Art Ross / Back to where they once belonged

With three assists tonight in the Lightning romp in Toronto (more on that in a bit), Martin St. Louis moves to 89 points for the season and a five point lead on Joe Sakic for the Art Ross Trophy. He also just shattered Brian Bradley's single season Lightning record for points in a season (the record was 86 points which Martin was tied at the last few games).

So, with that out of the way, the title of this post deems tonights game a return of Lightning hockey. The last few games (since a victory in Carolina and arguably the game before it) the Lightning have looked and played like a tired, haggard team and with an intensive schedule to end the season it's no wonder why. Fortunately, starting with a generous 5 on 3 Power Play at the beginning of the game, the Lightning quickly got into gear and got on the board.

Of course, with some botch ups (John Grahame mishandling a puck behind the net) it looked like the Lightning would relinquish a 3 goal lead in the 2nd and make this game closer than it was... Fortunately it did not happen. Vincent Lecavalier scored his 30th goal, Dave Andreychuk notched number 19 for the season (with 20, he will have 19 seasons of 20 goals or more -- only Gordie Howe and Ron Francis have more) and Freddy Modin tallied number 27 on the year (2nd highest total since 32 in 00-01). Brad Richards, Ruslan Fedotenko, Brad Lukowich and Martin Cibak (Martin "Anemic" Cibak?) rounded out scoring for the Lightning...

7-2 the final in Toronto... The next road game the Lightning face is likely to be game 3 of the opening round of the playoffs. But up until then they still have to overcome being 2 and 4 over their last six games...