Perhaps legendary pitcher Satchel Paige said it best.
“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
The “something” in our case is the youthful core of the Tampa Bay Lightning roster. And the warning is to veteran players throughout the NHL. Don’t look back, because the Bolts brats will skate right by you (see: Johnson, Tyler) or knock you into next week (see: Gudas, Radko) or stonewall your best shots on goal (see: Vasilevskiy, Andrei).
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With apologies to The Who, the kids are all right
The Tampa Bay Lightning, fresh off a 3-1 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers, bring their young stars to New Jersey tonight for a 7 p.m. puck drop at the Prudential Center in Newark against the struggling New Jersey Devils (11-16-6), who last won on December 8th and have lost five straight since.
The game will be telecast on Sun Sports and radiocast on 970/WFLA.
The Bolts will be looking to avenge a 2-1 loss to the Devils back in October and will try to earn their second win in this fourth game of a five-game road trip. The team heads to Long Island for a back-to-back with the New York Islanders Saturday night before returning home for Christmas.
And kids like nothing better than Christmas.
The Lightning got even younger on Tuesday in Philly with the NHL arrival of much-heralded goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, all of 20 years old.
The kid only Khabibulin-ed the Flyers, making 23 saves and allowing only one goal — a nasty redirection — in leading the Bolts to that much-needed 3-1 victory, breaking a two-game losing skid. The first two goals were scored by fellow 25-and-unders Steven Stamkos and Tyler Johnson. Venerable old man Valtteri Filppula (geriatric at 30) iced the win with an empty-netter near the end.
How’s this for a roster of quarter-century stars, both confirmed and of rising stature?
Forwards: Brown, Connolly, Drouin, Johnson, Killorn, Kucherov, Namestnikov, Palat, Paquette, Stamkos — that’s three full lines plus!
Defensemen: Barberio, Gudas, Hedman, Sustr — two full pairings.
Goal: Vasilevskiy — period.
Fifteen of the 25 NHL-ready Lightning roster spots owned by the kids.
Oh, and Tampa Bay still holds down first place in the Atlantic Division with a 20-10-3 record and 43 points, one ahead of those veteran-heavy teams from Detroit and Montreal.
The Red Wings and Canadiens must have looked back. Satchel Paige warned them about that.
The kids really are all right.
Drouin and Vasilevskiy can’t even buy a beer yet.
But the kids keep skating and hitting and stopping, the Bolts keep on winning, and Proud Mary keeps on churning. Rolling, rolling, rolling down the Devils.
Lightning coach Jon Cooper, a kid himself (at 44) who came of age with many of these kids down on the farm, has not named his goaltender for tonight’s game, but the bet here is that he will roll with Vasilevskiy. No doubt Cooper will send #88 back to the AHL once starter Ben Bishop has recovered from his lower body injury; the kid needs seasoning on the smaller NHL rink, the crowding in front of the net, the screened shots, the faster speeds, yadda yadda yadda. That’s what they all say.
If I were Evgeni Nabokov I would not look back. Andrei might be catching up.
“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” – Satchel Paige
Aside from Bishop, the Bolts face several other injury issues going into tonight’s match. Injuries do not discriminate by age. Tyler Johnson has the stomach flu and missed practice on Wednesday, so he is listed as questionable.
Ondrej Palat is also questionable, still not fully recovered from his lower body hurt. He did skate on Wednesday, so his return is imminent. Radko Gudas is pretty much better from his stomach flu, so he should be back on the ice tonight. No word yet if the Bolts intend to bring in another forward for the game or if they plan to skate 11 forwards and seven defensemen this time out.
The Bolts have also historically struggled on the road in New Jersey against a defense-minded team that makes serious use of defensive traps to limit scoring opportunities. Tampa Bay is 12-27-5 all-time in New Jersey (some of the Bolts brats weren’t even born before many of those games were played) and 3-8-3 up there since 2007-08 (OK, some of the kids played in those losses).
Speaking of defense, the Devils have allowed only 2.21 goals per game this season, 5th best in the NHL. The Lightning have not scored more than two goals (except for empty-netters) in the last four games, the worst scoring drought of the year. So it might be a low-scoring affair this evening. Unless the Devils start looking back.
Quote-master and baseball myth-maker Satchel Paige, who pitched to a ripe old age, also asked this, rhetorically:
"“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”"
Old enough to win in the NHL, I would say.
The kids are all right.
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