The Lightning understood it would be difficult to attract the Islanders and Rangers away from home on consecutive nights following the All-Star break.
It was made considerably harder by the emotional roller coaster they experienced over the course of a day.
Before Thursday night’s game in Long Island, the Lightning learned that defenseman Mikhail Sergachev will need surgery to repair fractures to his left leg’s tibia and fibula, which might terminate his season. They watched Sergachev leave the rink on a stretcher on Wednesday at Madison Square Garden.
Prior to playing the Lightning, both of the New York teams had played in a game. Tampa Bay’s attempt to regain the momentum it had before the break—winning eight of nine games—was severely derailed by a string of defeats that culminated in a 6-2 setback to the Islanders at UBS Arena.
The way the Lightning have recovered from this hiatus has frustrated coach Jon Cooper. “To make sure we were prepared, I believed we would have a little bit more in us. However, we’ve been sluggish. We appeared unfit. We appeared to have taken ten days off. We’ll have to earn our way back into the position we’re in by playing games, which is just not how you do it after all the hard work we put in to get there.
The Lightning appeared to be a lot like the squad that occasionally appeared to be lost defensively early in the season, giving up scoring opportunities to Grade-A teams by giving them away in front of the goal and making costly mistakes. After 11 games, Tampa Bay gave up more than three goals for the first time.
On just his second start in over six weeks, backup goalie Jonas Johannson gave up the most goals he’s given up in a regular start this year.
An emotional lingering
It was evident that the Lightning were still shaken by Sergachev’s loss the previous evening.
They didn’t recover the way they had after Sergachev’s initial injury in December, despite playing their best hockey of the year—especially on defense. They were stuck in their own zone for too long on Thursday and were unable to generate enough offense to get traction.
Forward Brandon Hagel, who scored in both of the two New York games, remarked, “It’s tough.” “We were not able to achieve it, but we could have turned a bad into a good and maybe did it for Sergachev on Wednesday or Thursday.”
Breaking down, not through.
The first 20 minutes of the game saw the Lightning play one of their worst games of the season, giving up three goals at equal strength and only registering three shots on goal.
Even so, with just over five minutes remaining in the second half, Anthony Cirelli’s shot off the post brought them within inches of tying the score at three. However, Steven Stamkos’ hooking penalty 14 seconds later placed New York on the power play.
With seven seconds remaining on the power play, Ryan Pulock’s shot from inside the blue line slithered through traffic and into the back of the net, almost killing the penalty for the Lightning. The goal increased the Islanders’ advantage to 4-2. It was the first of three goals they would score in a row to close the period.
“After then, everything kind of went south,” Cooper remarked. Simply put, not defending firmly enough. After two quarters, we had conceded six points. That is not how you are going to prevail.
Not a enough on net
The Lightning only managed eighteen shots on goal in their loss to the Rangers and just twenty against the Islanders. Most of their attempts were stopped or went over the net. This includes some up-close shots that ended up being wide.
Cooper stated, “We get pucks to our defensemen, and they have to get pucks through.” “And then, when we had excellent opportunities, we blew some really great ones. We missed some of our finest opportunities to score. That will therefore be our main emphasis.
