Tampa Bay Lightning Grind Out a Gutsy Win over Surprisingly Stubborn Sabres
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
— William Shakespeare, ROMEO AND JULIET
It’s a W.
Two points.
Pretty it wasn’t.
Victory it was.
Some will call it a character win. Some will say the Bolts scraped by. Others will opine that the Lightning avoided losing a trap game against a much weaker opponent. And still others will argue that Tampa Bay got lucky.
Call it whatever you like. It’s a W, and the Bolts will take it.
The heavily-favored Tampa Bay Lightning eked out a tense 2-1 victory Friday evening over the weary but game Buffalo Sabres before another sell-out home crowd at the Amalie Arena.
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The game was not as close as the final score suggests. The Bolts outshot the exhausted Sabres, who were playing the second half of a grueling back-to-back, by 47-21. That included a 27-5 edge in the second period alone, a Lightning franchise record for most shots in any period in any game. A second period the Bolts lost, 1-0, on a sweet (for them, anyway) short-handed goal by Buffalo.
Michal Neuvirth, once the “goaltender of the future” for the Washington Capitals and now the back-up of the present for the Buffalo Sabres, played like the greatest of goalies of all times and teams in stopping 45 of Tampa Bay’s 47 shots. Neuvirth entered the game with a mangy 3-10-1 record and 3.46 goals against average in his back-up role. All he did Friday night was channel his hidden Dominik Hasek and stand on his head to blockade the frustrated Bolts.
Tampa Bay only solved the suddenly stingy Neuvirth twice all evening.
Just four minutes into the match, Ryan Callahan took a pass from Cedric Paquette behind the Buffalo net. Callahan bulled his way in front and fired point blank at Neuvirth, who stopped the puck. The rubber trickled to the ice and Callahan swatted it to the right side. Valtteri Filppula swept in and knocked the rebound into the strings for an early 1-0 lead.
The rout was on, or so believed fans and Bolts alike. After all, this was the NHL’s highest scoring offense against the defense with the league’s worst goal differential, a startling -65. The Lightning were fresh and the Sabres were in the second game of a back-to-back, the front-end a 5-2 loss to Carolina. The Bolts were home after a successful (3-1) road trip, having won six of seven. The Sabres had lost six straight and had not won since last year. The rout was on. Except Michal Neuvirth never got the memo.
For the next 40 minutes Neuvirth stopped everything the Bolts threw at him. And his team even tied the game at 1-1 in the first minute of the second period. With Tampa Bay on the power play, Patrick Kaleta stole the puck along the boards from an uncharacteristically generous Anton Stralman. Kaleta hit a streaking Cody McCormick, who hadn’t scored a goal since last spring, and McCormick went in alone on Ben Bishop to score. The Lightning fired back with those franchise-record 27 shots (the most in the NHL this season while scoring zero goals) in the second. Ryan Callahan made a great move. Neuvirth stopped him. Brett Connolly had an open net. Neuvirth stuck out a glove and robbed him. Stralman hit the crossbar.
This just in: Neuvirth’s 27 second period saves set a Buffalo record for most saves in a single period. Take that, Hasek.
The stoning continued into the third period. At one point the Bolts had a 41-14 shots edge. Cedric Paquette went in on a breakaway and went out with nothing. A back-up by any other name had the Lightning’s number.
Finally, with a little more than five minutes left in regulation, Alex Killorn won a puck along the boards and hit rookie Jonathan “Cool Hand” Drouin in stride. Drouin and Steven Stamkos busted free for a two-on-one chance. Drouin and Stammer crisscrossed at the red line. Drouin drew the defender his way, then dished a perfect saucer pass to Stammer, right on the tape. Stamkos steamed in on Neuvirth. The goalie dropped low. Stamkos went top shelf, roofing the eventual game-winner, making it two game-winners in a row for the captain, who now has a team-leading 22 goals.
The win gave the high-flying Bolts five straight W’s at home and their seventh triumph in the last eight games.
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With the unexpectedly tough victory the Lightning moved into some rarefied company. Their 27-12-4 record gave them 58 points, tying the Bolts with Anaheim and Nashville for first place in the entire National Hockey League.
What’s in a name? No. 1 in the NHL has a sweet sound.
Tampa Bay has a couple of days to savor this elevated position in the standings. Then the one-game home stand gives way to back-to-back match-ups next Monday and Tuesday at the Philadelphia Flyers and the Boston Bruins.
Juliet Capulet, of the Verona Vipers of the old Italian Medieval Hockey Federation, sure knew her hockey clichés when she spouted her famous line, “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Call it whatever you like, but victory is always sweet.
Just ask the Tampa Bay Lightning.