Tampa Bay Lightning simply not good enough against Philadelphia Flyers

by Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
December 29, 2017

TAMPA, Fla. – On a nightly basis, the Tampa Bay Lightning continue to see the best effort from their opposition.

If Tampa Bay is not ready to compete at that level, the odds of victory drop significantly.

On Friday, the Lightning were not ready to compete at the same level of the Philadelphia Flyers. And head coach Jon Cooper put it pretty bluntly after the game of how he felt his team played following a 5-3 loss, which ended Tampa Bay’s eight-game home winning streak.

{mprestriction ids=”1,2″}

”We sucked. They were way better than us,’’ Cooper said. “They deserved the two points. We didn’t deserve anything. Just name it. Penalty kill. Sucked. Forecheck. Sucked. Didn’t shoot the puck. Sucked. Didn’t defend. Sucked. Coaching. Sucked. Just go through the list. But in saying that, we were playing somebody else that made us that way.”

Tampa Bay has cruised along for most of the season, steamrolling their way to the top of the league standings with a 27-8-2 record and 56 points. The loss on Friday was just the third on home ice this season and first at Amalie Arena in regulation since Nov. 18.

The challenge for the Lightning is to try to be up to that level on a nightly basis. Some nights, they just don’t have it. Friday was that rare night.

”We didn’t play well … simple,’’ said captain Steven Stamkos, who notched his 16th goal and league-leading 11th power play goal of the season. “We didn’t execute, didn’t deserve to win, didn’t have the will to win and you’re not going to win when you don’t have those things.’’

While both teams were on equal footing having played the night before, the Flyers losing to the Florida Panthers, it was Philadelphia that had plenty of jump. A team that endured a 10-game winless streak followed by a six-game winning streak came in to the game with one win in five games. In the competitive Metro Division, the Flyers are in desperation mode now to avoid falling even further behind in the standings.

Philadelphia came out and played like it. They were on the puck, forcing turnovers, using their speed and creating havoc in the Tampa Bay zone. Even if the Lightning opened the scoring on Stamkos’ goal 7:27 in to the game with his third goal in the past two games, the Flyers were the ones dictating play.

By the second period, Philadelphia was hemming Tampa Bay in its own end and started to turn the tide. The Flyers scored twice on the power play – the third time in the past six games the Lightning have allowed multiple power play goals in a game – in the span of 3:09 to turn a one-goal deficit in to a one-goal lead.

Not seeing enough from his team, Cooper mixed the top two lines around, swapping Nikita Kucherov and Tyler Johnson. The move created a bit of a spark as a nice passing sequence form Kucherov to Ondrej Palat to Brayden Point in the slot to tie the game at 15:37.

But karma being what it is, came back on Tampa Bay as one night after tying the game with 11 seconds left in the second period, the Lightning allowed a goal-ahead goal with 11 seconds left when Sean Couturier put Philadelphia back in front, snuffing out the momentum Tampa Bay had started to build up late in the period.

”We could of gotten out of it,’’ Cooper said. “Every time we tried to get going, we had a really good kind of spurt at the end of the second period. We kind of generated life. It’s funny how it works. Last night, we score late in the second and early in third and what does Philly do to us? It just sucked the life out of us. We looked a little tired, a little step behind.’’

As well as Peter Budaj played in his seventh start of the season, he didn’t get enough help, particularly around his crease where the Flyers took advantage of some loose play by Tampa Bay’s defense. To add insult to injury, Budaj ended up leaving the game with 9:34 remaining due to injury and was replaced by Andrei Vasilevskiy, who faced four shots on goal.

”You have to take positives out of everything,” said Tyler Johnson, who scored his second shorthanded goal of the season and seventh of his career. “We know what we did wrong. There are times when you win games and you don’t deserve them. Tonight, we didn’t deserve to win and we didn’t win, so we got to be better. We got to learn from this. That’s what the regular season is all about. We have to get better every day.’’

Tampa Bay was not going to remain unbeaten the rest of the year. There are still more bumps in the road to come as the season starts to shift toward a second-half mentality when teams begin go tighten up on defense. And the task is not going to be any easier facing a injury-riddled Columbus team on New Year’s Eve, a team that has blown two-goal leads in the past two games.

It’s going to be a quick turnaround facing another Metro Division team that feels it can’t afford to give away any points in the standings.

”We took one on the chin and we just have to regroup for Columbus,’’ Cooper said.

Postgame notes: Tampa Bay was without D Anton Stralman for the second consecutive game with an undisclosed upper body injury. … RW Nikita Kucherov extended his scoring streak to nine games, recording five goals and nine assists during that span. … Kucherov has a league best 19 multi-point games. … LW Ondrej Palat picked up an assist to give him 161 for his career, moving in to a tie with Chris Gratton for 10th on the all-time franchise list. … Tyler Johnson became the sixth player this season to reach double-digits in goals for Tampa Bay. … The Lightning fell to 1-4-1 in the second half of back to backs.

My three stars:
1.Flyers C Sean Couturier – Goal, two assists, plus-1, won 8-of-10 faceoffs

2.Flyers G Brain Elliott – Stopped 24 shots, many ten-bell saves among them

3.Lightning C Tyler Johnson – Shorthanded goal, eight shot attempts

{/mprestriction}