The struggles with putting away teams to get the win have been a recent theme in the season for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Philadelphia Flyers forward Owen Tippett added a late goal and the shootout winner to give the Flyers the 2-1 overtime win in Amelie Arena on Thursday evening.
After Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead on a wrap-around goal at the 19:15 mark of the first period, the Bolts missed opportunities to up the margin, which has been a routine process of late.
Tampa Bay now lost five consecutive games where they score first and haven’t been able to close out wins.
“It’s a big issue, especially of late where we are overcomplicating and under-complicating a game,” explained Lightning head coach Jon Cooper.
Tampa Bay gave up opportunities to score when getting open looks for open shots. A more aggressive mindset by the players would undoubtedly move the team forward since talent and ability is part of the team DNA and using those will result in extra opportunities.
The Lightning have taken only 26.9 shots per game which is 26th in the NHL. Thursday night, Philadelphia outshot the Bolts, 31-21, and that stat came into play with the Lightning’s late loss.
“It’s been the extra pass, the extra play, ‘there’s something better out there’, and it’s kind of sucked the life out of us and what it does is fuel the other team,” analyzed Cooper. “That’s exactly what it did on the goal they scored in the game.”
Tippett tied the game when he came up the left side of the ice and fired a backhanded shot that landed just under the crossbar. It was high and just above Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevsky’s shoulder and tied the game at 1-1 at the 15:44 mark in the third period.
“Unfortunately, you don’t close out every single game and this one was a closeout,” said Cooper. “The other games were tied and so you at least want to push that to overtime and so that’s how you munch points. Right now, we are not munching them.”
Dropping four contests with this same issue was due to the four-game road trip in the Western Conference against solid NHL combatants. Then, the turnaround matchup with the Flyers was only two days after losing four of five with the same issue of getting a lead and being able to add to the score to foster wins.
Cooper noticed the drop in the energy level for the Lightning on Thursday.
“It wasn’t great and it wasn’t great the whole game and you get that with those multiple times, time changes and the long road trip,” said Cooper. “The first game back is always a tough one and I am glad we got a point tonight. We could have snuck out two. Those are tough ones.”
Tampa Bay has a week off before hosting the Winnipeg Jets next Thursday. Of course, this allows opportunities for rest, practice and to adjust the thought-process in certain situations.
“It’s probably just a reset here for us,” noted Cooper. “You know, it’s always tough off of those long road trips. We would have some points on the board in the first game back so it’s a tough one.”
Vasilevskiy stopped 30-of-31 shots as he is still in search of that 300th win.
