On the face of it, the Tampa Bay Lightning aren’t — at least by their lofty standards — having a super-charged season. But when you’re the two-time defending Cup champions, the metrics you measure things by shift a little. And there’s no doubt, when you consider what Tampa’s challenges were heading into the year and how things have played out, that the Bolts are still well-positioned to take a serious run at making modern history.
Tampa was defeated 3-2 by the Vegas Golden Knights in a shootout on Saturday, right at home in Amalie Arena. The Lighting actually trailed 2-0 with 6:48 to go, when Ross Colton cut the Vegas lead to one goal. Then, for the fourth time this season, Corey Perry netted a game-equalizing goal with fewer than three minutes remaining in regulation.
Maybe the final result wasn’t what the Bolts wanted, but the contributions of those two players highlight how this team could be regenerating after losing every member of its highly effective third line in the summer. Colton already signalled he could be a player as a rookie last year. After bouncing back and forth between the main group and the taxi squad and appearing in about half the regular season matches, Colton played every single post-season contest for Jon Cooper’s crew. This year, he’s centring the fourth line and, since mid-November, has eight goals and 11 assists for 19 points in 30 outings.
For those keeping track at home, this is the one-billionth confirmed case of great drafting and developing by the Bolts. Colton, 25, was a fourth-rounder in 2016, played two years of NCAA hockey, spent two more marinating in the AHL with the Syracuse Crunch and is now playing more than 13 minutes a game for the best organization in hockey.
Perry’s backstory, of course, is known to anybody who’s been paying any attention to hockey in the past 20 years. After losing both the 2020 and ’21 Stanley Cup Finals to Tampa — first as a Dallas Star, then as a Montreal Canadien — Perry left Quebec to sign with Tampa — best decision ever? — last summer. The 36-year-old had one point after 16 games and zero goals after 17. However, he found the back of the net in Game 18 and has been scoring at a 35-goal pace since then with 12 markers in 28 contests. And, let’s be real; those late-game heroics are a window into why Tampa wanted this guy to begin with: It’s not about what he does in February, it’s about how you know he’s going to show in crunch time.
And while the performance of Colton and Perry have lessened the blow of losing Yanni Gourde, Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman — the guys who comprised that often terrorizing third unit — this team will, of course, always be defined by its ample star power. To that end, Victor Hedman is producing points at the best rate of his career, while Steven Stamkos is well over a point-per-game this season and — most importantly for the guy who’s had such awful injury luck and hasn’t played anything close to a full campaign since appearing in all 82 in 2018-19 — hasn’t had an injury-related absence this year. Brayden Point did miss 14 games with an upper-body injury, but he’s scoring at a 40-goal pace otherwise. And while Nikita Kucherov — who didn’t play a regular season game last year — is once again missing huge swaths of the schedule (insert cap circumvention joke here), he’s essentially a plug-and-play nuclear weapon at this point.
As for Andrei Vasilevskiy, he’s reached that level where he’s universally recognized as the best at his position regardless of what everyone’s stats are at this very minute. And how about Alex Killorn — the guy so often mentioned as the sacrificial cap lamb in the past three or four years — jumping up a tier or two to play at nearly a 75-point pace this year?
Three teams in the Eastern Conference are currently ahead of the Lighting by points percentage, but it’s worth noting the club’s .711 mark is actually higher than the number it posted in each of the past two seasons, both of which ended with confetti and Champagne. Should that happen again, Tampa will become the first NHL team since the early-80s Islanders to win three straight Cups. In pursuit of that incredible goal, the squad appears to have found another wave of third- and fourth-line contributors who can underpin the ongoing star turns at the top of the lineup.
Other Takeaways
• The Los Angeles King busted out the chrome buckets on Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh and they sure had substance to go along with their flashy style. After seeing a 3-1 third-period disappear against Sidney Crosby and Co. — and playing 24 hours after an OT loss to Philadelphia halted the Flyers’ 13-game losing streak — Los Angeles left Pennsylvania on a high thanks to Trevor Moore’s beauty snipe on the game-winner. The goal was Moore’s second of the game and the former Toronto Maple Leaf has been on fire of late, registering 16 points in 14 games since the calendar flipped to 2022. The win meant L.A. has earned at least a point in the first five outings of a six-game roadie that concludes Tuesday in Detroit. The Kings started the year 1-5-1, but newcomers Phillip Danault and Viktor Arvidsson have blended well, Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty are solid as ever and 2020 second-overall pick Quinton Byfield now has a half-dozen games — and his first NHL goal — under his belt after sustaining a left ankle fracture in the pre-season. Los Angeles has the seventh-best points percentage in the Western Conference, the fourth-best Corsi percentage in the league (54.12 percent) and is hanging tough in pursuit of its first playoff appearance since 2018.
• Make it 18 straight home wins for the Avalanche after their 4-1 defeat of the Sabres on Sunday. In the sporting parlance of our time, these guys are a wagon.
• So the “Michigan” has already become a hockey staple to the point that Jonathan Huberdeau — the NHL’s leading point-getter, by the way — actually faked doing it to get Brent Burns to bite just a little before setting up Sam Bennett for the OT winner in (another) big win for Florida on Saturday versus the Sharks. All these young players crazy hands and imaginations, the NHL can’t thank you enough.
Weekend Warrior(s)
Cheers to Henrik Lundqvist and Sergei Zubov — seventh- and fifth-rounders, respectively — who watched their numbers raised to the rafters on Friday night.
To be honest I can’t really put in to words how amazing last night was. I had so many moments throughout the night that felt surreal. Thank you to the entire @NYRangers organization for what you have done for me and my family #NYRforever pic.twitter.com/hjouXZWdKw
— Henrik Lundqvist (@HLundqvist) January 29, 2022
Red and White Power Rankings
1. Toronto Maple Leafs (27-10-3) Rasmus Sandin’s first goal of the year was a game-winner with 2:51 remaining in the third period in what turned out to be a nutty 7-4 comeback win for the Leafs over Detroit on Saturday. It also came two years and two days after his only other NHL tally, which occurred Jan. 27, 2020.
2. Calgary Flames (21-13-6) The Flames, who shutout the Canucks 1-0 on Saturday, have been all or nothing defensively the past half-dozen games. They allowed five goals on two separate occasions, but they’ve surrendered just two goals total in the four other games.
3. Edmonton Oilers (22-16-2) Basically everybody got a cookie versus the hapless Habs on Saturday, as 14 Oilers hit the score sheet in the 7-2 victory.
4. Winnipeg Jets (18-16-7) Paul Stastny, who’s quietly scoring at a 30-goal pace, had a huge pair against his old team in St. Louis on Saturday as the Jets staunched the bleeding with a 4-1 win to snap their six-game losing streak.
5. Vancouver Canucks (19-19-6) It was an impressive showing from Thatcher Demko on Saturday, as the goalie — making his first start since Jan. 18 thanks to a COVID protocol stint — stopped every shot he faced in regulation before losing in OT on a slot-rocket from Johnny Gaudreau.
6. Ottawa Senators (13-21-4) Saturday’s 2-1 loss to the Ducks was a tough one, given the Sens put 45 pucks on Anaheim stopper John Gibson. Ottawa hasn’t allowed more than two goals in regulation in its past five contests and is averaging 37 shots on goal during that stretch.
7. Montreal Canadiens (8-29-7) The Canadiens gave up a combined 13 goals to Edmonton and Columbus during home losses on Saturday and Sunday. And while it was awesome to hear Carey Price — speaking publicly for the first time since last summer — say he’s feeling much better after receiving treatment for addiction, he also acknowledged he’s not completely sure when (or if) he’ll be able to continue his NHL career thanks multiple setbacks with his knee injury. That’s, uh, not the weekend you want.
The Week Ahead
• Sidney Crosby can score career goal No. 500 if he can find the net twice on Tuesday night. The Penguins are hosting Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals, so Sid will probably make it happen, right?
• Also on Tuesday, Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs visit their old team in Vegas. The Golden Knights won’t drop by Buffalo until March 10 and wouldn’t it be something if that was Jack Eichel’s first game back?
• Speaking of Vegas, the NHL All-Star Weekend kicks off in the desert with the skills competition on Friday, followed by the three-on-three fun on Saturday.
