4
0
Stock correction in Sunrise as Lightning get outworked by little brother.
TB-2
FLA-5
Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed 4 goals on 28 shots for the loss.
First Period
8:56 FLA Vatrano (2), (Tippett, Luostarinen)
Second Period
8:31 FLA Wennberg (3), (Huberdeau, Hornqvist)
10:55 TB Point (5), (Palat, Hedman)(PP)
12:54 FLA Ekblad (4), (Yandle, Barkov)(PP)
14:55 FLA Verhaeghe (7), (Wennberg, Ekblad)
Third Period
0:54 TB Point (6), (Hedman, Vasilevskiy)(PP)
19:00 FLA Connolly (1), (Weegar)(EN)
Brayden Point was the game’s third star.
Put simply: not good enough. I get that the Lightning had to play this game without their captain, who is day-to-day. That’s no excuse for the awful effort level tonight. The team was slow. The team was second to pretty much every loose puck. They lost the vast majority of 50/50 pucks. And, they got blown away in the faceoff circles. They were only superficially in the game because of Brayden Point. That was it. It comes down to effort, from where I sit. There’s nothing special about Florida’s skill level. But, hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, and the Lightning did not work hard tonight.
We also now need to worry about Anthony Cirelli leaving the game injured against the Panthers, too, although as tough as he is I suspect he’ll be back quickly.
Congratulations to the Panthers on winning your Stanley Cup, 11 games into your regular season. And, they did it in front of what has to be record attendance for them. What a richly deserved triumph for such a fine franchise.
Cal Foote was -1 with 1 blocked shot in 9:26. He wasn’t good, including a pretty futile attempt to play a 2-on-1 that resulted in a Florida goal.
Alexander Volkov had 1 shot, 1 hit, and 1 blocked shot in 11:58. He had one pretty good shift in this game. That raised his average as of late.
Box score and extended statistics from NHL.com.
