Tampa Bay Lightning end the career of Antti Niemi with Pittsburgh

After just three games in Pittsburgh, goaltender Antti Niemi has been waived and he has mostly the Tampa Bay Lightning to thank.

NHL Network posted a picture on twitter that got a lot of attention recently. Their aim was to provide some interactive content and start a conversation about the struggling backup goalie of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Antti Niemi.

What they actually did, was provide hockey fans with a few good laughs at Niemi’s expense.  Directly after this was posted, Niemi was waived.   This was mostly because of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Niemi only received three starts in his time with the Penguins, and all of them were losses.  Two of them were against the Lightning.   As the infographic above was kind enough to point out, Niemi let in 16 goals in his three games.  The Bolts were responsible for 12 of these.

In their first meeting, the Bolts won 5-4 and in their second, the Penguins were routed 7-1.  These scores were largely due Lightning’s Power Play, which has been on fire since the start of the season.  Almost half of the goals scored by the Bolts in these two matchups were on the power play.  According to ESPN, the Lightning boast the 4th best Power Play percentage in the league with an impressive 28.9%.

After these two matchups, it’s also safe to assume that Niemi has nightmares about Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos.  The duo is responsible for 5 of the 12 goals scored by the Lightning and assisted many of the remainders.  Their performances against the Penguins contributed largely to the duo being honored by the NHL as stars of the week.

Of course, the Lightning aren’t responsible for the other loss and 4 goals allowed by Niemi.  However, the Bolts provided 3/4 of the goals and 2/3 of the losses that made the Penguins decide to part ways with the goaltender.  So while the move may not be ALL because of the Bolts, it’s at least 66.66% because of them.

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It’s been a wild couple of days for Niemi.  He’s currently on the way to the home state of the Lightning as the newest member of the Florida Panthers.  This means the Lightning have the possibility of facing him two more times before the season’s end.  As Panther’s starting goalie Roberto Luongo is on the IR battling a finger injury, there’s no doubt that these games are circled on Niemi’s calendar.