Game Seven: Minnesota Wild (4-2-0) at Tampa Bay Lightning (4-2-0)
Time: 7:00 PM EST
Location: Amalie Arena
TV/Streaming/Radio: FDSNSUN, FDSNNO, FDSNW, ESPN+, 102.5 FM
Odds: Lightning -148
After finishing up their first back-to-back of the season, the Tampa Bay Lightning settle into a nice three-week stretch of playing every other night. First up will be a home game against the Minnesota Wild (which also means Joe Smith is back in town. Hi Joe!). The nice thing is that there is constant hockey for fans to consume, the drawback is that it cuts down on practice time for the team early in the season.
Now that they’re at home for a few days, the Lightning should be able to get some work in on their offd-days, but, as he’s progressed as a coach, Jon Cooper has become more aware of making sure he isn’t overloading his players, especially early in the season. There is a fine line between overworking your players and making sure that they are doing the necessary things in order to fix issues within their game. While the Lightning are 4-2 on the season, there are definitely some things that need work.
With a couple of power play goals against New Jersey, and one in Toronto, it does look like the Bolts have started to figure things out with the extra skater. It might be a tad early to say that things are fixed, and that they are back on the way to an elite unit, but it’s at least trending in the proper direction. Flipping Nikita Kucherov to the left side of the ice has seemingly opened up some more space for the first unit and forced teams to spread back out a bit.
If Kucherov stays on the left side, it will be interesting to see if he shoots the puck as much as he did on the right side. One of the keys to their success was his ability to keep opponents guessing on if he was going to shoot or pass on that side. It’s a bit more awkward to do that in his new spot, but if there was a player who could pull it off, it would be him. The benefit is that the Bolts have more forwards who are comfortable shooting on the right side, something that Anthony Cirelli showed on their first power play goal of the night against the Devils.
It’s the other side of the special teams coin that the Bolts have really struggled with this season. After finishing fifth last season with an 83.3% success rate, the penalty kill is now ranked 29th in the league at 68.2% this season as they’ve allowed 7 goals on 22 opportunities.
The good news is that they’ve been a bit unlucky in the goals allowed department. For the most part they are doing some decent things and in regards to shots allowed and scoring chances, they are pretty much middle of the road in the league. They could use a little better goaltending as the team’s .750 SV% shorthanded is the fourth-worst in the NHL right now.
Now, before we ride Andrei Vasilevskiy and Jonas Johansson out of town, understand that the low save percentage is partially on the penalty killers in front of them. According to Natural Stat Trick, of the 7 goals they’ve allowed, 4 of them were considered high-danger goals. The defenders have to do a better job of clearing out the slot.
It’s just a little too easy for Auston Matthews at the side of the net here to swat home the loose puck.
The Lightning are carrying over a lot of the same personnel that killed penalties last season and Jeff Halpern is still the coach responsible for the systems, so it’s a bit early to consider it a real problem. If this stretch of bad play happens in January, we would look at it as a glitch, but since it’s early, it seems like more of a feature problem. Chances are the Lightning will work out the coverage issues, and the goalies will make a few more tough stops. Before we know it, they’ll be back up in the top half of the league.
Minnesota will give them a solid test on special teams as they are clicking along at 33.3% on the power play through six games. Sophomore winger Matt Boldy is responsible for two of those power play tallies, and has assisted on another two, accounting for half of the eight points he has on the season. He’s given them some scoring depth behind Kirill Kaprizov (10 points) and Mats Zuccarello (7 points) as the Wild are off to a pretty good start at 4-2-0. The top two lines have been rolling, outscoring their opponents 11-1 at 5v5.
In net, noted goal scorer Filip Gustavsson appears to be blossoming into the netminder they need in order to return to the playoffs. With Marc Andre-Fleury set to retire after this season, the Wild are hoping that The Gus Bus shows he can be a true number one netminder. So far this season, the answer is yes as he’s posted a 4-0-1 record with a .952 SV% and 1.40 GAA. He’s yet to concede more than two goals in a game and is rocking a 5.32 GSAx on the season.
The Lightning offense has shown that they can produce, but, much like they did against Vegas, they’re going to have to be patient and stick to their game plan. Minnesota likes to clog up the shooting lanes and block shots, so the Bolts can’t get frustrated.
Keeping the puck out of the net when they are shorthanded would go a long way to picking up a victory as well.
