The Tampa Bay Lightning have recalled Gabriel Dumont from the Syracuse Crunch. Dumont, along with Erik Condra, were re-assigned to the Crunch last Sunday at the start of the Lightning’s bye week. The Crunch had a game Sunday night and again on Wednesday night. Neither appeared in Sunday’s game against the Utica Comets. Condra played Wednesday against the Albany Devils, but it appears that Dumont never left Tampa and got some well-deserved time off.
Dumont has played in 14 games for the Lightning this season in a fourth-line role with a goal and an assist. In four more games, he’ll have matched his total career games played in the NHL prior to joining the Lightning last July as a free agent.
While his offense won’t jump out at you, Dumont has been part of a fourth line that has been very reliable, often generating ample offensive zone time against opposing teams’ top offensive threats. He has often been paired with Cedric Paquette, both interchangeable at center and at taking faceoffs. The other side of the line started out with Michael Bournival, who was replaced by J.T. Brown after Bournival suffered an injury. Bournival has since been re-assigned to the Crunch after recovering from his injury.
According to Corsica.hockey, Dumont has a 56.6% score and venue adjusted Corsi For Percentage. While his Goals For percentage has been 33.19%, his Expected Goals For percentage is 59.35%. That difference suggests that he and his cohorts are getting dangerous chances and doing a good job of preventing dangerous chances, but haven’t been lucky in finding the back of the net. I should also note that with 14 games played, it’s also a fairly small sample size. Some of that difference can also be attributed to the fact that fourth liners typically aren’t snipers either and less capable of picking their spots on their shots. That makes it likely that they’ll underperform their expected goal scoring performance based on shot danger.
With Ryan Callahan still ailing, there’s still a spot for Dumont on the fourth line. Whether or not he holds that spot for the rest of the year is up for debate. However, at this point, he’s probably the first forward that will be bumped from the lineup as the Lightning get healthy, with Johnson appearing likely to rejoin the team tomorrow night in Dallas.
