Two teams are battling it out for the Stanley Cup on catfish-laden ice. Unfortunately, the Tampa Bay Lightning are not one of those two teams. In order to fill the void for Lightning fans, Raw Charge is breaking down the past season team by team to see who helped and who hurt the season.
Opponent:
Games:
February 18, 2017 @ Dallas, Dallas 4, Tampa 3, Overtime
Preview by Achariya: “What happens when your captain works hard to play for his national team, but gets injured in the process and has to recover instead? I’m not talking about Steven Stamkos for a change, I’m talking about Jamie Benn. Benn injured a muscle in his core while training for the World Cup of Hockey, and spent training camp recovering from surgery. Dallas Stars coach Lindy Ruff went on record to say that missing training camp gave Benn a “slow start” to the season, but unlike Tampa’s captain, Benn has since had a chance to make up for it.”
Recap by JustinG: On the overtime period: “Lightning dominate possession. Dallas gets one shot and it goes in.” Antoine Roussel also scored his first career hat trick in this game.
April 2, 2017 @ Tampa, Tampa 6, Dallas 3
Preview by iActium: “The fortunate thing about this evening’s game is that Dallas is also in a back-to-back. The Stars played in Carolina last night and defeated the Hurricanes 3-0. Tampa Bay scrounged one point from Montreal last night after coming back midway through the third to tie the game and force overtime. It’ll be interesting to see which team will have the better legs under them. I’ll be very interested to see how the Lightning skate.”
Recap by Achariya: “It was a ridiculously messy game, but thanks to the energy of the kids and two calls going the Bolts’ way, Bolts managed to hold on for the win.”
Boxscore:
Goals: Adam Erne (2), Victor Hedman (2), Braydon Coburn, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, Brayden Point, Anton Stralman
Assists: Ondrej Palat (3), Jake Dotchin (2), Tyler Johnson (2), Andrej Sustr, Anton Stralman, Brayden Point, Brian Boyle, Jonathan Drouin, Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Vladislav Namestnikov, Yanni Gourde
Save Percentage:
Andrei Vasilevskiy, .857 SV% (24 saves on 28 shots)
Peter Budaj, .885 SV% (23 saves on 26 shots)
Trades:
While Ben Bishop eventually did make his way to the Dallas Stars, it wasn’t the trade we expected as he was sent to the Los Angeles Kings first at the trade deadline with the Dallas Stars already being out of the playoff hunt. The Lightning have not made a trade with the Dallas Stars since November 30th, 2008. The Lightning traded Andrew Hutchinson in exchange for the rights to Lauri Tukonen. Tukonen never signed with the Lightning and has remained in Finland.
There was one big trade before that one though. In February of 2008, the Lightning sent Brad Richards and Johan Holmqvist to the Stars in exchange for Mike Smith, Jussi Jokinen, Jeff Halpern, and a 2009 4th round pick.
Did Dallas help or hurt the Lightning this season?
It was mostly a wash. While the Lightning did get three our of four points from the series, the season was mostly in the toilet by then. The first game came not even two weeks before the trade deadline when Steve Yzerman threw in the towel. When the Stars came to Tampa, the playoff hopes were still alive… barely…
A loss to the Boston Bruins two nights later ended up being the difference. The Lightning won the last three but had already been eliminated by the time the last game of the season was played.
At least we weren’t Bruce Boudreau.
