Tampa Bay Lightning Toppled By Surging Washington Capitals

As the Tampa Bay Lightning special teams continues to struggle, the Lightning were toppled by the Washington Capitals Friday night at the Verizon Center.

The Tampa Bay Lightning knew they had a tough road ahead of them last night when they walked into the Verizon Center to take on captain Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. Not only are the startling amount of injuries beginning to weigh heavily on the Bolts, the Capitals lead the Eastern Conference by quite a margin already this season.

While the Tampa Bay Lightning may have taken charge early in the game, the team absolutely fell flat on their faces as the Washington Capitals came back from a three-goal deficit in the second period and surged back with five unanswered goals to defeat the Lightning 5-3 and complete a season sweep over the Lightning.

As we mentioned previously, the Tampa Bay Lightning came into this game like they meant business. In the first period of play, the Lightning would strike first blood with a beautiful goal from Alex Killorn.

Lightning defenseman Braydon Coburn would send the puck forward to Bolts center Jonathan Marchessault, who would take control of the puck before dropping it back to a surging Killorn. Killorn bided his time and struck on a distracted Brayden Holtby to give the Lightning the early lead.

The next player to sink the puck in the back of the net is not someone you would generally think of when it comes to making swift offensive plays in front of the net. Nikita Kucherov took control of the puck alongside the Lightning net and played the puck through the neutral zone. After spinning to evade Capitals defenseman Matt Niskanen, Kucherov passed the puck to Lightning defenseman Andrej Sustr. Sustr skillfully handled the puck and beat Holtby to bring the Lightning up 2-0 early in the second period.

Just a couple of minutes later, Lightning captain Steven Stamkos would finally rid himself of his goalless streak by rifling one home past Holtby to give the Tampa Bay Lightning a 3-0 lead over the Washington Capitals. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of the end of the Lightning.

Late in the second period, Stamkos found himself with a one-way ticket to the penalty box for Slashing Capitals defenseman John Carlson. Judging by the way the Lightning’s special teams has been playing lately, it’s pretty easy to imagine what happened next. You guessed it, Ovechkin comes in rifles a shot, which was deflected by Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop, only to dig for the rebound and bring one home for the Caps.

In the third period, it was all about the Capitals. In fact, the Tampa Bay Lightning only managed to muster a total of four shots on goal in the final period of play. As we have said many times before, we have always been a proponent of quality over quantity, but there comes a time in every player’s life where you just have to take the shot.

So…onto the deconstruction of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s win. First, the Lightning would battle for the puck behind the Capitals net. Steven Stamkos would get a piece of it, but bombarded by coverage, Stamkos would play it along the boards. Unfortunately, this is the moment when things go topside. Capitals right wing T.J. Oshie would get a piece of the puck and go flying down the ice, beating Braydon Coburn and eventually Ben Bishop to get yet another point back for the Capitals.

The next two goals for the Capitals would come on, you guessed it, the Power Play. The first of these two goals was netted by Alex Ovechkin, who would score his second goal of the night, who was almost completely uncovered and walked right in to the front of the net and beat Bishop.

The second would come at the hands of Capitals winger Marcus Johansson. Brian Boyle would attempt to bring the puck into the Lightning’s offensive zone, but he was tightly covered by three Capitals players and would eventually end up turning the puck over. The Capitals would execute a string of well-orchestrated passes and the rest is what we call history. Ultimately, it would be this goal that would been deemed the game-winning goal.

In the final seconds of the game, the Capitals would add insult to injury as T.J. Oshie would net his second goal of the night on the empty net. Once again, the Tampa Bay Lightning were forced to leave the Verizon Center with their heads down low and their hopes of getting a victory over the Caps this season turned to dust.

Fortunately, the Tampa Bay Lightning don’t have much time to dwell on their loss to the Capitals. On Sunday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning head home to the Amalie Arena to kick off a six-game home stand with a battle against the Ottawa Senators.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done if the Tampa Bay Lightning want to bring home the two points against the Senators on Sunday night. The most important of these is the special teams. Both the Power Play and the Penalty Kill have continued to struggle this season, and if the Tampa Bay Lightning can’t seem to get a handle on it, they may very well play themselves right out of contention for a spot in the post season.

The Tampa Bay Lightning were able to come out on top against the Ottawa Senators in their first encounter this season back on December 10^th when they defeated the Senators 4-1 at the Amalie Arena. It will be interesting to see if the Bolts can recreate some of the momentum they had in that game, and bring one home in front of the hometown fans.

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