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Tampa Bay Lightning Look to Get Back on Track Against the Vancouver Canucks (Preview)

By Tasha St. Pierre

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Tonight, the Tampa Bay Lightning head out on a five-game road trip as they head to Canada to go one on one with the Vancouver Canucks.

The Tampa Bay Lightning will be looking for a little redemption tonight when they take the ice at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver to face off with Henrik Sedin and the Vancouver Canucks.

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Tonight’s game will mark the beginning of a five-game road trip that consists of four stops in Canada and one in St. Paul to go one on one with the Minnesota Wild.

As you can imagine, the Lightning will want to get back on track and gain a little bit of redemption after their 2-1 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday night at the Amalie Arena.

While the defense played a pretty solid game, which has seemingly become the norm as of late, the offense just couldn’t seem to get their act together, falling into some of the bad habits that we believed they had left far behind them.

At the end of the day, every team and every player are entitled to a bad day every now and then (as long as they don’t make a habit of it.)

Unfortunately, the road to redemption is littered with many obstacles – most of them known as the Canucks.

So far this season, the Canucks are yet to taste the bitterness of defeat, having taken down the Calgary Flames 4-2 and the Edmonton Oilers 5-4 in a shootout and 2-0 respectively.

On the bright side, when you break down the numbers, these two teams aren’t exactly that far apart. In fact, other than the win/loss column, the advantage may even go to the Lightning.

Here’s a quick look at the stats courtesy of ESPN.com.

LightningCanucks
Goals Per Game3.253.33
Goals Against Per Game1.752
Shots on Goal Per Game3535.33
Penalty Minutes Per Game9.510.33
Power Play Goals63
Power Play Percentage31.6%23.1%
Power Play Goals Allowed11
Penalty Kill Pecentage92.3%90.9%

As I said before, these two teams are pretty close together when you take a look at them side by side. The Lightning’s penalty kill squad has been doing phenomenal this season, which is something that the Bolts have struggled with in the past. It was only this past game that they let one slip in the third period.

As you can imagine, it is the dynamic duo of Henrik and Daniel Sedin who are leading the way in points for the Canucks with six each. Henrik has two goals and four assists and his brother Daniel has one goal and five assists.

On the other side of the ice, it is defenseman Victor Hedman who has been leading the charge for the Tampa Bay Lightning. In the four games so far this season, Hedman has scored three goals and four assists for a total of seven points.

An interesting note from tonight’s game is that this will be the first time that newly acquired defenseman Jason Garrison will be facing off with his former team since being traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The Tampa Bay Lightning have everything they need to get the job done at their disposal, the only thing left for them to do is put one skate in front of the other and get the puck in the back of the net.

Which team do you think will come home with the win tonight? What do you think the score will be when the final buzzer sounds? Which player(s) do you think will really stand out tonight? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Don’t forget, tonight’s game is a late game. The puck drops at 10:00 p.m. EST.

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