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Tampa Bay Lightning Look For Redemption Against the Hot Minnesota Wild

By Tasha St. Pierre

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The Tampa Bay Lightning head home to the Amalie Arena on Saturday night looking for a little retribution against Mikko Koivu and the Minnesota Wild.

The Tampa Bay Lightning has fallen into a bid of a skid as of late; dropping two games in a row by the score of 5-2. The first was against the New York Islanders on Tuesday night, then once again on Thursday against a hungry Toronto Maple Leafs team.

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Now, the Tampa Bay Lightning head home to the Amalie Arena in the hopes of getting a little bit of retribution, and of course righting the ship, against Ryan Suter and the Minnesota Wild.

The bad news is, this is going to be a bit of an uphill battle for the Lightning. As most of you remember, the Lightning has already met the Wild once this season. Back on October 25th, while the team was on the second half of their second back-to-back series that week, the Bolts were dealt a painful 7-2 defeat.

In addition to this, the Wild have been on a bit of a hot streak lately. They enter this matchup against the Lightning on the four-game win streak. As you can imagine, they will be looking to keep their winning ways moving.

Fortunately, we have a strong feeling that the Tampa Bay Lightning will have something to say about this.

Tonight’s game begins a short three-game home stand for the Bolts, who have always been known for perform well in front of the hometown crowd.

Neither Evgeni Nabokov, who got the start in the encounter, nor Ben Bishop – who took over in net when Nabokov was pulled, put in a particularly fantastic show in their last encounter with the Wild. On the other hand, considering the circumstances that the Lightning entered that game in, that is relatively understandable.

One would assume that the Bolts would be looking to start Bishop in the net against the hometown crowd, but this will obviously be a decision that will be made during the pre-game skate.

So far this season, Bishop has played in 17 games where he has gone 11-3-2 with a Goal Allowed Average of 2.37 and a Save Percentage of .914.

Now, while it is also unknown who will be tending the pipes for the Wild, one would assume that they would go with goaltender Darcy Kuemper. Kuemper has played 15 games this season with the Wild where he has gone 9-5-0 with a Goals Allowed Average of 2.03 and a Save Percentage of .918.

There are a couple of keys that are going to be essential to a Lightning win tonight when they take the ice. The first of which is going to be puck handling.

They have had quite an issue in their own zone with handing the puck over to their opponent at the most inopportune moments, which have caused the goaltender to scramble to stop repeated shots.

Another issue that the Bolts have had is allowing the other team multiple chances with the man advantage. We all know that the Lightning seem to have zebra magnetism. In other words, the refs just love calling penalties on the Lightning.

This means that they are going to have to take extra care not to put themselves in a position where they could be called on something; especially when the play is already in their defensive zone.

The final key to the game, which may very well be the most important of them all, the team is going to have to revert to the way that they started the season and be much more aggressive with the puck; especially while in the attack zone.

As always, I am very much a proponent of quality over quantity, but the simple fact of the matter is that you will never score on a shot you don’t take. In other words, stop over passing the puck, take the shot, and be there to catch the rebound if the puck doesn’t find the back of the net.

Even the most skilled goaltender in the world can’t stop every single shot they come against when they continue to come at the one right after the other.

There is no denying that the Tampa Bay Lightning has the offensive potential to get the job done. Lightning captain Steven Stamkos has scored himself 13 goals and 10 assists for a total of 23 points. This puts him in second place in the league in goals and fourth in the league in points.

The Tampa Bay Lightning has just about everything they need in order to get the job done. About the only thing that could make things better would be the return of Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman. Unfortunately, we are still a couple of weeks away from this one coming into fruition.

The one thing we know for sure is that when the Bolts take the ice tonight at the Amalie Arena, they are going to need to hear all of us here in the Bolts Nation screaming loud and proud and providing the thunder. Are you ready to Be the Thunder? The puck drops at 7:00 p.m.

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