Reality has arrived
Lightning are no longer Stanley Cup contenders
TAMPA — Twice, they were champions. Once, they were underachievers. Mostly, they were fighters.
Today, the Lightning are something totally different.
They are ordinary. It’s been many years since that description fit. Probably back in 2017, which was the last time Tampa Bay failed to make the playoffs.
But after losing 5-3 to Florida on Thursday night — their sixth consecutive postseason loss at Amalie Arena — the Lightning are on the verge of being swept out of the playoffs. They are on the verge of losing their third consecutive playoff series after winning 11 in a row from 2020-22.
And they are struggling to understand how this could happen to a proud, accomplished group.
“There’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves or beat ourselves up. At this point, that’s a waste of energy,” said defenseman Matt Dumba. “We’re down. We’re down 0-3, and all of us would love to snap our fingers and wake up and it be 2-1 or the other way around. But that’s not the case here.
“So you have to deal with the harsh reality. Look at it in the eyes like the men we are, and understand that it’s one game at a time.”
Can they come back from an 0-3 deficit? Stranger things have happened.
But not very often. More than 200 NHL teams have dropped the first three games of a series, and only four have come back to win. That puts the success rate at a tad below 2%.
“There’s no more games if you lose the next one,” said forward Tyler Motte, who gave the Lightning their first lead of the series with a second-period goal Thursday night. “Our backs are against the wall. You find out who you are, you come out swinging.”
And maybe that’s the answer:
This is who the Lightning are today.
That’s not a criticism as much as an observation. The Lightning had a six-year run that was among the best ever seen in the salary-cap era, but attrition has finally caught up. This version of the Lightning is pretty close to who the Lightning were for most of the regular season.
The aberration, as it turns out, was the hot streak in March that enabled them to sneak into the postseason.
“We need to keep instilling that belief in one another because it’s contagious,” Dumba said. “When we’re playing good and playing with confidence it’s a beautiful thing to watch Lightning hockey. And everyone knows that. The whole league knows that.”
Their depth has been depleted by free agency, and their defense is not what it used to be.
But the one thing the Lightning supposedly had going for them in 202324 was the power play. Between Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point and Victor Hedman, they could put four elite players on the ice with a man-advantage.
Yet, in this series, they have been sadly impotent.
The Lightning are now 2-for-12 on the power play, and one of those two goals came in a 6-on-4 with Andrei Vasilevskiy pulled at the end of Game 1. It’s true, Florida has one of the best defenses in the NHL; but the Lightning are at 16.6% on the power play against the Panthers after leading the league at 28.6% in the regular season.
“If they’re going to give us eight [penalty] minutes, you’ve got to do something with it. And we didn’t,” coach Jon Cooper said. “Some of it is on us, it’s our execution. We haven’t been as sharp on the power play as we could have been.”
This is not 2019 when the Lightning had Kardashian-like flash but no heart. This is not like 2022 when they fell just short of three-peat glory in the Stanley Cup final against Colorado. This is not even like 2023 when they had skill, verve and pluck but came up a little short in the first round against Toronto.
This feels more like a fork in the road. Like the future has to be reimagined with a new set of characters.
The magic the Lightning had for so long seems to have slipped out the door along with Tyler Johnson, Ryan McDonagh, Ondrej Palat, Alex Killorn, Blake Coleman, Barclay Goodrow, Kevin Shattenkirk, Pat Maroon and a handful of others.
At this point, it would take a miracle to recapture what this team used to be.
Which is exactly what the Lightning will need beginning Saturday in Game 4.
“When we believe in that in here and we come to the rink and we’re scoring goals and looking at the positives and understanding what we need to do to execute better and play our best game?” Dumba said. “When we get to that game the story is going to be written different, and I 100% believe that.”