Having a hard time getting a beginning started here, because I'm having difficulty deciding where to start. The Tampa Bay Lightning are in a bad place. They are a failing on-ice squad. Despite their expensive offensive players and hot-topic coach and GM, they can't beat the other teams.
Because that's the way you've got to think about this shit. You can't just think about "Winning games." That's too theoretical. You've got to think about beating that other group of guys over there. You've got to say, "Hey, could the Lightning beat the New Jersey Devils?"
Not tonight they couldn't.
I wonder about what gets said during the players only meetings that take place during losing stretches like this. I wonder if Vinny gets up and makes a speech about how everyone has got to bear down together and bury their chances. Or the other veterans talk. Brewer maybe. Or Roloson can try and explain that although he failed to make the saves tonight, he promises he'll try really, really hard to make them in future games.
I wonder if anyone just asks the rest of the group, "How are they beating us? And why are we letting them beat us? Are we just not good enough to stop them? Can't we find a way to stop them from beating us? How do we beat them?"
They are falling way behind in games and then scoring goals to make a failing comeback. They are playing tight games and still losing by two, three, four goals. At times the attack seems like waves breaking against rock, while the defence stands around and the goaltenders just lie back and hope it hits them.
This team, which made such incredible strides last year, is falling apart like the teams that came before the Saviour Regime of Vinik, Yzerman, and Boucher arrived. Teams like in John Tortorella's last year, or in Melrose/Tocchet, or solo Tocchet. All teams with good pieces and a few genuine stars, but nonetheless unable to string together wins and simply unable to beat good or even average teams.
That's where this group sits.
Ah well. I'm as guilty as everyone else. I wanted them to re-sign Dwayne Roloson this past summer too. I love a good player that is also a good story, and Dwayne Roloson is a good story. And he was great down the stretch last year and in the playoffs, but holy shit, is this as good as he's going to get this year? Is it just taking him a really long time to get his timing back, or is this it? Because if this is it, Yzerman better start choosing a prospect to trade away to get a halfway decent netminder. You know, like he did last year.
While he's at it, Yzerman can also choose a prospect to trade away to bring in a body to prop up this half-assed defence group. You know, like he did last year.
Last year paid for itself in the deep playoff run. As the Lightning slide, what does Steve Yzerman do? Does he trade more future to support a present that isn't really playing as though they were a destined squad? This season seems more "holding pattern" than "go for it." Would Yzerman prefer the Lightning cruise along its current path and finish well out of the playoffs, collect the high pick and reload for next season?
This is the excitement of having a second-year general manager: we've seen what he did once. Will he try the same thing again?
But as I said, it's not all bad, despite the brutal stretch of one win in seven or eight or whatever the hell it is now, not to mention the team missing its spiritual and offensive leader in Martin St. Louis. Despite the slow start, the so-so stretch, and now this awful patch.
At least the 1-3-1 wasn't the story that came out of the Lightning-Flyers game on Saturday. I couldn't have handled it as a story again.
And at least the Bolts went "appropriately" berserk about the shooty-gun thing in the Rangers game, and so avoided having to say how they don't like that sort of thing and bemoaning the fact that no one on the ice responded, and the media questioning the Lightning's toughness and speculating whether the League will back the Lightning up by suspending Artem Anisimov for wishing he was a gangsta. But by having Lecavalier charge him like a bull, and Downie and Stamkos both slugging Anisimov in the face, the Lightning can be praised for sticking up for themselves, which the media will tell you was the reason they won the game later in a skills competition.
Basically, they avoided all the miserable crap the Buffalo Sabres went through with the Miller-Lucic thing, and now Victor Hedman won't have to fight Anisimov in a future game to settle the score.
Actually, what I thought was funny about the whole thing, was that Lecavalier basically instigated the whole thing by charging Anisimov, and yet he is one of the few players not to receive a penalty, because he had a linesman's arms wrapped around him the whole damn time.
But I digress.
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