Tampa Bay Lightning Hope To Continue The Struggles Of The Arizona Coyotes

The Tampa Bay Lightning charge into the Jobing.com Arena in the hopes of continuing the struggles of captain Shane Doan and ailing the Arizona Coyotes.

The Tampa Bay Lightning seems to have taken the bull by the horns as they make their way through their current road trip through the Western Conference. So far, they have taken four of the six points they have had dangled in front of them.

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Now, the Lightning will charge into the Jobing.com Arena in the hopes of keeping up their momentum, and in turn continuing the struggles of the Arizona Coyotes.

As we have mentioned many times already, the Coyotes have had their fair share of struggles this season.

In fact, they have dropped four of their last five games; two of which were in front of their hometown crowd. This means that the team will certainly have something to prove to their fans; especially in their own building.

The question becomes whether or not they will have the offensive pressure to get the job done.

Leading the way for the Coyotes is defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. In the 58 games he’s played so far with the Coyotes, he’s netted 17 goals and 13 assists for a total of 30 points. Surprisingly enough, Ekman-Larsson is not the Coyotes’ leading point scorer.

The Coyotes leading point scorer this season has been defenseman Keith Yandle. Yandle may have only scored 4 goals in the 58 games he’s played this season, but he has earned himself a whopping 36 assists which gives him a total of 40 points.

Unfortunately, not one single player on the team has a positive player rating. That doesn’t bode well for a team that is in such dire need of a win.

On the other hand, we all know the kind of offensive fire power that comes along with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Leading the charge in goals for the Bolts is our captain Steven Stamkos. Stamkos has netted 31 goals for the boys in blue so far this season. Coupled with his 23 assists, this gives him a total of 54 points this season.

Much like the Coyotes, the Lightning’s leading goal scorer is not their leading point scorer. That honor goes to one of the high-octane Triplet Line; center Tyler Johnson. Johnson has 22 goals and 34 assists so far this season, which gives him a total of 56 points. This accompanies Johnson’s whopping plus-28 rating.

The Tampa Bay Lightning has a lot of firepower in their arsenal and have everything that they need to get the job done, but as you can see from the above numbers, one thing the Coyotes do have going for them is an offensive defense.

If this comes down to a battle of the goaltenders, this game could get really interesting really quickly. Mike Smith has been suffering from an illness lately, one that has caused him to miss the Coyotes’ 5-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, may be back in the net against the Lightning.

The former Lightning netminder hasn’t fared very well against his former team this season. In fact, on October 28^th when the Coyotes took on the Lightning at the Amalie Arena, Smith got about two and a half periods of playing time before being pulled for his backup Devan Dubnyk.

Unfortunately for the Coyotes, in those two and a half periods Smith allowed six goals on thirty three shots which left the Coyotes an insurmountable score to settle with only ten minutes left in the game to do so.

On the other side of the ice, Tampa Bay Lightning Head Coach Jon Cooper has said that the Lightning netminders would be splitting duties heading into this weekend’s back-to-back series, but he did not specify which netminder would be starting which game.

Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop has had his fair share of difficulties this season, but the twenty-eight year old Denver native put up a pretty solid performance on Wednesday night against Anaheim, allowing just one goal 25 shots.

On the other hand, newly promoted Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy has been pretty solid so far this season as well. In the nine games he’s played so far this season, Vasilevskiy has gone 4-2-1 with a Goals Allowed Average of 2.13 and a Save Percentage of .927.

No matter which netminder finds themselves between the pipes against the Coyotes, we are sure that we are going to be in for one heck of a game.

The puck drops at 8:00 p.m., which is just a little later than usual. Here’s a look at all the information you’ll need to make sure you don’t miss a moment of the action.

Which Lightning player do you think will strike first? Who do you think will be the standout in the encounter? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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