6
0
Naive Lightning spot Sunrise an easy Game One victory.
FLA-6
TB-2
Florida Leads the Series 1-0
Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed six goals on 16 shots for the loss. The stat line was brutal, but I can only really find fault with about one of those goals allowed.
First Period
3:44 FLA Bennett (1), (Samoskevich)
12:21 TB Guentzel (1), (Kucherov, Hedman)(PP)
19:15 FLA Reinhart (1), (Kulikov, Verhaeghe)
Second Period
4:41 FLA Schmidt (1), (Marchand, Bennett)
4:55 FLA Tkachuk (1), (Reinhart, Barkov)(PP)
9:44 FLA Tkachuk (2), (unassisted)(PP)
13:04 TB Point (1), (McDonagh, Goncalves)
Third Period
5:09 FLA Schmidt (2), (Tkachuk, Barkov)(PP)
From the Second Period of this game on, Sunrise was playing playoff hockey and the Lightning were still playing regular season hockey. They didn’t match the rise in intensity. They didn’t match the rise in physicality. They didn’t match the rise in focus. They looked like a naive, bewildered team. Unprepared. Unsharp. Unserious.
I don’t know how you can spend the First Period on that bench listening to Matthew Tkachuk run his fat well worn yap at you for twenty minutes and come out in the Second Period not understanding you’re in a fist fight in a phone booth. But that’s what happened. The Panthers realized they can’t just skate with the Lightning so they started taking runs at Tampa Bay (By the way, this is what the Sunrise franchise has been doing for OVER TWENTY YEARS! It’s not a novel or new approach by them!) late in the First Period and then took it to another level in the Second Period and blew the Lightning off the ice quickly. Now you have Cirelli potentially out after not returning after leaving in the Second Period. Erik Cernak is nicked up. Yanni Gourde is nicked up. And all of it, ALL OF IT, was entirely predictable. Yet this entire group from the youngest player on the bench up through the most grizzled veteran and the entire coaching staff looked like they had no clue what was happening. I can’t fathom it. How? How are you not ready for what Ray Charles can see coming (and he’s blind AND dead)?
I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but to spot Sunrise a cheap win AND allow them to injure your 2C and jam up your 1RHD and 3C too? You may have already lost the series with the naivety of tonight’s performance. Time will tell, but you usually can’t give teams of any quality cheap wins in playoff series and expect to advance. This generation of Lightning players, if they don’t find a way to fix it really fast, may be tarnishing the legacy of this group and its place in history. Because let me tell you something: what the Lightning have done winning back-to-back Cups and going to the Finals three years in a row, none of that’s gonna look all that impressive or special anymore if you let the stinking Sunrise Panthers waltz right through you on the way to doing the same thing. Think about that. Then show some grit and some pride and do something about it. Because tonight was nothing less than an embarrassment to the crest and to the city. I’m ashamed tonight.
Do better.
Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.
