Tampa Bay Lightning: What Went Wrong In Game 6?
Unnecessary Penalties
Under normal circumstances, the Tampa Bay Lightning have done a good job of keeping themselves out of the penalty box and opening the door for their opponent to make a move on them and give up an unnecessary goal. In the circumstances when the Lightning did find themselves in the sin bin, their penalty kill squad has done a good job of killing the penalties off.
Unfortunately, in Game 6 it was a series of bad penalties that opened the door for the Pittsburgh Penguins to open up the scoring against the Lightning. First, it was Lightning defenseman Anton Stralman who would be sent to the penalty box for two minutes for Interference. While this may have been a weak call, at best, it was still a penalty the Lightning would have to kill off.
Less than a minute later, Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman would send the puck sailing over the glass which resulted in Hedman being sent to the penalty box for Delay of Game. If you haven’t seen the issue with this already, allow us to elaborate. Because of an unnecessary penalty, the Tampa Bay Lightning had to kill off three minutes’ worth of penalties with their two best defensemen in the penalty box.
The Lightning did the best they could under these circumstances, but in the end, Pittsburgh Penguins leading goal scorer Phil Kessel would capitalize on their opportunity with the man advantage and put the puck past Lightning netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy and into the back of the net and give the early advantage to the Pens.
All hockey fans, not just those here in the Bolts Nation, know the NHL’s officiating over the course of the last few seasons has been anything but across the board. There is a very good chance there will be more than one bad call on both sides of the ice on Tuesday night. This only proves the point the Lightning need not give them any reason to want to blow their whistles and give the Penguins the upper hand.
We will concede there are moments when a penalty is what’s best for the team; however, the penalties taken in Game 6 were not that kind of penalty and need to be avoided at all costs on Tuesday night in Pittsburgh.
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