Looking back at the Tampa Bay Lightning’s December performance

Sure, it’s a couple of days late, but we’ll just blame the post-holiday brain fog for the timing. As the Tampa Bay Lightning cool their heels for a couple of days, it’s not a bad time to take a look at how things went in a busy December. After righting their season with a blazing-hot November, things were a bit more…chaotic in December.

The month started with four losses (not great). Then they found their offense for a couple of games (that’s good!). Next came a couple of losses, including one to Florida (boo). After that, they started winning, and haven’t stopped. Literally. They finished the month with a five-game winning streak, and have since tacked on another three wins. After starting the month on top of the division, they finished it two points behind Detroit (albeit with a better points percentage) and a four-point gap between them and the Florida Panthers, the first team out of the playoff picture.

Overall, it was a month that had some adversity with injuries and some tough games, but the Bolts struggled through it and ended up winning more games than they lost (at least in regulation). They also solidified their line-up a bit, and have established a bit of an identity.

The Lightning had 26 different skaters play at least one game in the month and, at one point, were without Victor Hedman, Ryan McDonagh, Erik Cernak, and Emil Lilleberg. Brayden Point and Brandon Hagle missed a few games. Andrei Vasilevskiy was out for a couple of weeks. Combining that with a tough schedule and picking up points in eight of their fourteen games is actually a solid accomplishment. They weathered the storm.

A look at the numbers:

Stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and NHL.com

For a team that has Stanley Cup aspirations, winning only half of the games they played in any given stretch isn’t ideal, but the results don’t always match the process. Yes, we’re all familiar with the process over outcome mantra that has been a staple of Coach Jon Cooper’s 1,000+ reign behind the Lightning bench. There is a solid reason for that. While the wins didn’t always come, the Lightning were building a style of play that has a proven track record of success.

Start with keeping the puck out of the net, and build the offense from there. What the underlying numbers are showing is that the Lightning are starting to control the front of the net on both ends of the ice. They’re limiting dangerous chances from their opponents and generating more (at least compared to the rest of the league) in the offensive zone. Why harp on high-danger chances? Simple, that’s where most goals come from in today’s NHL. Beating goaltenders from distance isn’t a sustainable form of offense.

It is somewhat amusing that three of the Lightning’s seven losses came at the hands of the New York Islanders in contests that were pretty much up for grabs until the final whistle. In all three games the Lightning won the battle in just about every statistical category except for the one that mattered the most – goals. They really did get goalie’d by Ilya Sorokin in those games.

There was some good and bad mixed in their other losses. The games against Toronto and Los Angeles were close. The loss to Florida was one of their least whelming performances of the year and the 4-3 loss to Pittsburgh featured a furious comeback after going down 3-0. Oh yeah, the NHL had something to say about the outcome as well.

So, the losses were a mixed bag. How about the wins? Montreal (2x) and Carolina were quality wins against teams in a playoff spot as of today while New Jersey, Florida (always fun to beat no matter what their record is), and Anaheim are in the playoff hunt. They went 4-2-1 on the road and 3-5-0 at home as they continue their slightly topsy-turvy season as a better road team than they are as a home team.

There was a little more life in the power play as it finished at 18.4% with 9 goals on 49 opportunities. Going 0-for-11 in their two games against Florida didn’t help the cause, but they did go 1-for-3 against Anaheim on New Year’s Eve, which seems to have sparked them a bit as 2026 has gotten underway.

The biggest problem for them for the majority of the month was an inability to generate a lot of sustained pressure with the extra skater. Winning the puck in the face-off dot, the best way to get established on the power play, was a source of discontent as they finished the month winning just 46.3% of the draws, ranking them 26th in the league in that category. Entries were a problem as well and they spent too much time chasing the puck down to their end of the ice and regrouping.

The constant roster churn, especially with Ryan McDonagh and Victor Hedman missing time, did affect their penalty kill, which finished a very un-Lightning-like 78.8%. Going short-handed 10 times against Florida in their 4-2 win inflated the numbers a bit, but the Bolts were down at least one skater 52 times in the month. That’s a bit too much.

On the individual front, it was Nikita Kucherov leading the way with 19 points (7 goals, 12 assists) in 14 games. After being held pointless in two of his first three games, Kucherov started piling points up. He would be held off the score sheet just once the rest of December (the Bolts loss to the Panthers on the 15th). Even more impressive, in those final 10 games where he did record a point in December, 9 of those were multi-point efforts. He finished the month with 13 points in his last 5 games. Kucherov was back to doing Kucherov stuff.

Joining him at the top of the scoring column was Darren Raddysh. Pressed into a top-pairing role due to the absence of Erik Cernak (one game played), Victor Hedman (three games played), and Ryan McDonagh (three games played) The Bald Eagle soared, producing 13 points (6 goals, 7 assists) in 14 games. Taking over on the point for the first power-play unit, he finished with 3 goals and 2 assists.

Some other notable performances were Pontus Holmberg scoring 5 times in the month. The free-agent signing, along with Yanni Gourde and Zemgus Girgensons, formed Coach Cooper’s go-to shut-down line as the month progressed. The trio spent 132 minutes together at 5v5 during December and the team generated a 60.81% edge in expected goals, 62.50% edge in scoring chances, and 71.74% edge in high-danger chances. Despite the territorial dominance, they were outscored 5-2 (both goals were Holmberg’s). That’s kind of the Lightning’s month in a nutshell. They did a lot of good things, but weren’t always rewarded.

Defensively, J.J. Moser might not have piled up the points, but he emerged as one of the Lightning’s top blueliners as he flipped back to his natural side. Despite logging more 5v5 minutes than any other skater on the Lightning, the team posted a 1.04 GA/60 when he was out there. There isn’t much flashy about his game, but there aren’t many mistakes either.

In net, Jonas Johansson had more games than Andrei Vasilevskiy, but did his part as he posted a 4.04 GSAx with an .897 SV% and 2.74 GAA. While his official record was 3-4-1, he was a bit abandoned by his teammates as they scored a whopping one goal in three of those losses (2-0 to the Islanders, 2-0 to the Maple Leafs, 3-2 (SO) to the Islanders). After missing a portion of the month with an undisclosed injury, Vasilevskiy was solid with a 2.52 GSAx, .902 SV% and 2.36 GAA while going 4-2-0.