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
