Lightning Making a Habit of Scoring Early

The Tampa Bay Lightning have enjoyed a tremendous amount of success in recent years. Over the course of that time however, they have never been particularly known for regularly having great starts in games. This season, that seems to have changed and seems to be a recipe for the success they have had so far this year.

In 13 games this year, the Lightning have scored the first goal of the game in the opening 10 minutes. They would go on to win 11 of those games. The Lightning have 19 wins to this point in the season, so over half of their wins have come while scoring first in the opening 10 minutes.

On this recent home-stand in which the Lightning won five out of six games, they won four of those by scoring first in the first 10 minutes of the game.

In four straight games, Tampa Bay has opened the scoring in the first 10 minutes.  They would go on to win all four of those games, resulting in the four game winning streak they find themselves on now.

Thursday night’s win over Columbus even saw Pierre-Edourd Bellemare open the scoring under four minutes in for his first goal of the season. Tampa Bay would end up surrendering the lead later in the second period before re-gaining the lead in the third, so obviously scoring early is not the end-all be-all.

The pace in which the Lightning have been scoring early in games will likely come back down to earth at some point over the season, but scoring early has been a positive indicator on the way to munching as many points as possible through this part of the season.