Tampa Bay Lightning at Carolina Hurricanes: Will the Lightning find the key to the Hurricanes net?

Tampa Bay Lightning at Carolina Hurricanes: GAME 16

Time: 7:00 pm Eastern Time

Location: PNC Arena

Broadcast/Streaming: Fox SUN

Opponent SBNation Site: Canes Country

Preview:

After a very tough loss on Saturday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning will have a chance to get revenge tonight. The Carolina Hurricanes have been one of the more complicated riddles for the team to solve. So far this season the Lightning not only have lost both games against Carolina but haven’t even scored a single goal.

Overall, the Lightning performance wasn’t dreadful in either of the previous games but not converting their chances and committing unnecessary turnovers, especially in the last game, dragged them down. Statistically the Hurricanes led the game in both possession and expected goal share and while their advantage wasn’t that big it’s still not a very good sign given that the Lightning had been trailing the most of the game.

One of the few positives for the Lightning has been their penalty kill. The Bolts haven’t allowed a goal while being one man down in their last three games. They are the fifth in the whole league in penalty kill percentage this season and are leading their division by a pretty big margin. The power play though hasn’t matched this success as the Lightning have scored just one power play goal during the same time frame.

While the skaters in front of the net weren’t very consistent against the Hurricanes, Andrei Vasilevskiy was clearly the best Lightning player in both of their meetings. In the last game he kept the team in the game halfway through the third period and had a clean sheet in regulation time of their first meeting. Since the start of the season Vasilevskiy has been in his playoff shape and currently leading the league in goals saves above expected with 7.02 GSAx at 5v5.

Speaking of the rosters, both teams will likely run pretty much the same lineups. The Hurricanes are still missing Teuvo Teravainen who will miss few games with an upper-body injury. Mitchell Stephens is not expected to return until the half of March and Anthony Cirelli is still week-to-week with no clear timeline of return. There’s a small chance that one of Alex Barré-Boulet or Ross Colton will make their debuts for the Lightning, especially Barré-Boulet, if Jon Cooper will decide to bring more offense.

After tonight’s game the Lightning will return to Amalie Arena for two another games against the Hurricanes.

Tampa Bay Lightning Lines

Forwards

Ondrej Palat - Brayden Point - Steven Stamkos

Alex Killorn - Tyler Johnson - Mathieu Joseph

Blake Coleman - Yanni Gourde - Barclay Goodrow

Pat Maroon - Gemel Smith - Alex Volkov

Defense

Victor Hedman - Jan Rutta

Ryan McDonagh - Erik Cernak

Mikhail Sergachev - Luke Schenn

Goalies

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Curtis McElhinney

Carolina Hurricanes Lines

Forwards

Andrei Svechnikov - Sebastian Aho - Brock McGinn

Nino Niederreiter - Vincent Trocheck - Martin Necas

Warren Foegele - Jordan Staal - Jesper Fast

Cedric Paquette - Steven Lorentz - Jordan Martinook

Defense

Jaccob Slavin - Dougie Hamilton

Jake Gardiner - Brett Pesce

Brady Skjei - Jake Bean

Goalies

Alex Nedeljkovic

James Reimer