TAMPA, Fla. — Even Luciano Pavarotti had to occasionally clear his throat.
That’s what Tuesday night felt like for the Lightning. The once, and possibly future, champions took the ice through a flashing entryway amid thunderous applause for the home opener at Amalie Arena. They looked as slick and chic as ever, and they had a sold-out crowd screaming its adoring approval.
And when it came time to hit the high notes, they burped.
It was disappointing, but not necessarily shocking. For teams that are well-traveled on the road to the Stanley Cup Final, there is a lazy Sunday drive-quality to the regular season.
Don’t get me wrong, the regular season matters. You can’t pass Go without it. But, sometimes, it takes a little time to get everything and everyone steering in the right direction.
In the meantime, you have games like Tuesday when the Lightning blew a two-goal lead and lost 3-2 to a Flyers team with a little more energy, a little more spunk, a little more appetite.
That makes three losses in four games for Tampa Bay, and there’s no way to turn that into a happy tune. But, and this is important, the Lightning went through funks like this last season. They lost three out of four in October, in December, twice in March and even lost four in a row in April.
You might recall, they also reached their third consecutive Stanley Cup Final in June.
“Every single year you have to reprogram into your brain, things you have to do,” coach Jon Cooper said. “But how we just let that one slip away, that’s not our style.”
So what, exactly, has been the problem through the first week of the season? There are some pretty obvious clues when you look at the numbers.
The Lightning are committing too many nonsensical penalties. A hooking call on Steven Stamkos in the first minute of the third period allowed Philadelphia to tie the game 41 seconds later.
Speaking of the third period, Tampa Bay has now been outscored 8-2 in the game’s final 20 minutes, although this was the first game that they blew a third-period lead.
Just as surprising is the Lightning’s inability to generate offense 5-on-5. They didn’t score an even-handed goal against either New York or Philadelphia, and the only one they got against Pittsburgh was at the end of a blowout loss.
“We had the O-zone pressure, we had the shot-scramble mentality that we talk about,” said Stamkos, who had two power-play goals. “It just didn’t go in.”
Half of Tampa Bay’s 10 goals this season have come on the power play, which is about 30 percent higher than you normally want. Other than Stamkos, there is not a single forward on the correct side of the plus/minus rating. The No. 1 line of Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Brandon Hagel has produced one even-strength goal.
All of that sounds rather negative and dire, but it’s not as if the Lightning are playing terrible hockey. They’re just not getting the results you’ve come to expect.
Some of that might be a veteran team easing its way into a season. Some of it might be figuring out a new chemistry after mainstays Ondrej Palat, Ryan McDonagh and Jan Rutta moved on in the offseason.
The process of discovering which players click together on various combinations can be a complicated thing. Cooper will invariably mix things up over and over again before settling on a best-case scenario as the playoffs draw near. And that will include defensive effort as well as goal-scoring.
“We had chances to score. I’m fairly certain the analytics for both teams will say we had more chances,” Cooper said. “But it’s not about how you score. We didn’t need anymore. We had the two, and we were done. We didn’t need to score any more goals. You can sit here and say, ‘If we got the next one, we could have put Philly away.’ That’s not how it works. You have to defend your way to wins.
“That’s what we had to do, and we didn’t do it.”
So what should you take away from the season’s first week?
Point is skating fast and effortlessly after last season’s injury, so that’s a good thing. Stamkos is following up his first 100-point season with an even faster start this year, so that’s excellent.
Everything else is still up in the air. We’re still learning what Hagel and Nick Paul can do over a full season. We’re still learning if the defensive group can survive without McDonagh. We’re still learning if age will eventually become a factor for the Lightning’s core group.
So sit back, and enjoy the ride.
We’ve got a long way to go.
