Lightning at Islanders: Shake it off, get the win

Game #52 – Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Islanders
Time: 8:00 PM EST
Location: UBS Arena
Broadcast/Streaming: ESPN

Opponent’s Site: Lighthouse Hockey

Preview

The Lightning have to put the pain of seeing their teammate and hockey brother Mikhail Sergachev getting injured less than 24 hours ago behind them and dig out a win against the New York Islanders tonight. That won’t be the easiest task in the world, but they do get to try and find their new normal against a team that has been struggling all year long in the New York Islanders.

Expect Calvin de Haan to return to action in Sergachev’s spot with Erik Cernak while Emil Lilleberg stays in the line-up. Jonas Johansson will likely get a spot start in net after Andrei Vasilevskiy played against the Rangers last night.

As for the Islanders, they are 2-2-1 under their new head coach, hall-of-famer Patrick Roy. While a .500 record might not be much to write home about, it’s kept them in the Wild Card race for now. Scoring has been a bit of an issue for them as they are 24th in the league in 5v5 scoring with 2.31 GF/60. Mathew Barzal is their leading scoring with 52 points (14 goals, 38 assists) in 49 games while Brock Nelson (21) and Bo Horvat (20) are their only skaters with more than 20 goals on the season.

Defensively they aren’t horrible as they are only allowing 2.38 GA/60 at 5v5, which is 9th in the league, but their penalty killing is last in the league at 72.1% and they’ve allowed 43 goals while down at least a skater. Lucky for them they don’t take an egregious amount of penalties as they’ve been shorthanded 154 times, which is 16th fewest in the league. They can also be a bit frisky as they have scored 9 shorthanded goals with Simon Holmstrom accounting for 5 of them.

Their goaltending duo of Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov hasn’t been as good as they have been in the past with Sorokin rocking a 3.14 GAA and .910 SV%. He has put up a couple of decent starts recently as he stopped 34 of 36 Toronto shots in his last outing and 41 of 43 against Dallas three starts ago. Both of those starts were wins for the Islanders.

The Lightning can write off their 3-1 loss to the Rangers on Wednesday to a little rust and a lot of emotion, but they’ll have to put all of that behind them to pick up two points against a team that they are fighting for a playoff spot against.

Stats Match-up

Lines

Tampa Bay Lightning Projected Lines

Forwards
Nick Paul – Brayden Point – Nikita Kucherov
Steven Stamkos – Anthony Cirelli – Brandon Hagel
Mikey Eyssimont – Tyler Motte – Conor Sheary

Alex Barré-Boulet – Luke Glendening – Mitchell Chaffee

Defenders
Victor Hedman – Darren Raddysh
Calvin de Haan – Erik Cernak
Emil Lilleberg – Nick Perbix

Goalies
Andrei Vasilevskiy

Jonas Johansson

New York Islanders Projected Lines

Forwards
Anders Lee – Bo Horvat – Mathew Barzal

Pierre Engvall – Brock Nelson – Kyle Palmieri

Simon Holmstrom – Jean-Gabreil Pageau – Oliver Wahlstrom

Matt Martin – Casey Cizikas – Cal Clutterbuck

Defenders

Alex Romanov – Noah Dobson

Adam Pelech – Ryan Pulock

Mike Reilly – Scott Mayfield

Goalies

Ilya Sorokin

Semyon Varlamov

The Playoff Race