GDT: 2/16/15 - 10:30PM EDT - Tampa Bay @ Los Angeles

[DFC]

The skating/effort and passing always seem to appear when it's too little too late. This team needs a mindset change. I'm convinced of it.

How often do you see mad scrambles that last an entire game?

The effort was there tonight. The Kings are a good team and they got away with a lot. It allowed them to negate our speed.

I don't think Stamkos was bad so much as he was neutralized. That entire line was invisible.

 

[The Macho King]

How often do you see mad scrambles that last an entire game?

The effort was there tonight. The Kings are a good team and they got away with a lot. It allowed them to negate our speed.

I don't think Stamkos was bad so much as he was neutralized. That entire line was invisible.

He gets neutralized a lot.

 

[TheDaysOf 04]

I'll echo on what others have said about Witkowski. Not a good game for the kid after playing 18 minutes last night. On the Nolan and Carter goal, he really backed off the attacker. No gap control. What I think happened is he gave himself an extra step because he's afraid he'll get beat with speed.

 

[Yzlamic Preacher*]

Overall it wasn't a bad game. It's just our inexperienced D is showing. As sad as this is, we need Carle back.

 

[DFC]

He gets neutralized a lot.

Yeah, he does. But usually he's neutralizing himself on top of it by passing pucks out of our zone or into defenders. Tonight he just had guys draped all over him. The only time I even noticed Callahan tonight was when he was getting elbowed. Killer had some nice heads-up moments on D. It's not like I don't think we should expect more from Stamkos, but this is one of those nights where he was probably not gonna have a great night regardless of what version of him showed up. Kings were good, refs were blind.

I don't like complaining about refs or blaming refs, but we've had two games this year that have looked like Dead Puck Era games. This one, and the one last week against Anaheim.

 

[MattM92]

Kings play clutch and grab hockey and get away with everything. I noticed 4 blatant calls in the last two minutes all go uncalled. Two within seconds of each other in the corner, one in front of the Kings net with around 15 seconds left and Killorn getting hooked on the wall with seconds left. Also watched 1.5 seconds tick off after Johnson's goal and they didn't even check the clock. Bush league.

 

[Werewolf]

Teams we can't beat ... St. Louis, Kings, Boston ... anything in common?

 

[DFC]

Kings play clutch and grab hockey and get away with everything. I noticed 4 blatant calls in the last two minutes all go uncalled. Two within seconds of each other in the corner, one in front of the Kings net with around 15 seconds left and Killorn getting hooked on the wall with seconds left. Also watched 1.5 seconds tick off after Johnson's goal and they didn't even check the clock. Bush league.

Yeah, after the Anaheim game I wondered if teams who play clutch and grab so relentlessly get away with it a bit more because it sort of becomes the "norm" of game flow for that game. Seemed like they were particularly targeting Johnson with it. Every time he made a pass his defender would give him a little tug on the arm to slow him down.

 

[Boltsppy]

Hi guys, I'm back in HF, past months I was just reading.

Tonight's game : It wasn't bad at all, bad that def is really bad, rookies + Barbs caused lot of goals past games. That PP is funny. We are OK to get to the offensive zone in 5v5, but when playing PP it becomes difficult somehow. I think we need some physical forward like Backes, all of our forwards are skilled, but not good when they have to play physical game - PP and Playoffs.

 

[Vasilevskiy]

Teams we can't beat ... St. Louis, Kings, Boston ... anything in common?

We can beat St. Louis... I will give you the other two tho.

Maybe it's me but Sustr just sucks... I prefer to play any of our rookie d-man than him.

 

[Antiramie]

How often do you see mad scrambles that last an entire game?

The effort was there tonight. The Kings are a good team and they got away with a lot. It allowed them to negate our speed.

I don't think Stamkos was bad so much as he was neutralized. That entire line was invisible.

Not saying the effort was subpar before that last spurt. Just pointing out that when our backs are to the wall or we're getting embarrassed we start playing more aggressively instead of nickel and diming with cute passes and never shooting the puck. It's amazing what happens when you can disrupt the defense at the front of the net, and we scored both times we did it. Aside from early in the 1st and the late flurry, I saw few good scoring chances.

The way the game was officiated obviously handcuffed us. But our deficiencies (PP, passing, defense) were still painfully on display. Maybe the outcome is different if the refs actually blow the whistle one of the multiple times we got held, roughed, etc. And maybe if it's not the second night of a back-to-back we end up with a better result. But it wasn't.

Stammer needs to bounce back...somehow. Filppula, for the love of god, SHOOT THE PUCK. Yzer, please please please bring in some D-men. The PP may be a lost cause at this point.

 

[VinikToWinIt]

Big time no calls on holding, picks, etc etc etc all night. I was disappointed to see the Kings resort to this style of hockey, although it seems to be more of a western conference style than just LA.

 

[VinikToWinIt]

Also, we dance around the zone waaaaaay too much. In the final 30 seconds we were ripping shots frantically and almost scored multiple times. We need to find a middle ground when we have forwards with such killer shots on this team. This is why our PP is so ineffective as well, guys always looking to make the pretty goal and ignoring the gritty ones.

 

[The Macho King]

Teams we can't beat ... St. Louis, Kings, Boston ... anything in common?

TIL losing by one on the tail end of a back to back means you can't beat a team.

Bring on Boston in the playoffs. Not scared of them one bit.

 

[TheDaysOf 04]

 

[DFC]

Even in some of these losses (particularly the two to the Kings), I feel like we're proving we can hang with the better teams in the league. We're right there.

We're also starting to feel the sting of Matt Carle's injury. Barbs managed to keep up for 4-5 games (he played something like 23 minutes one night) and then he got overwhelmed. Witkowski had his first truly bad game tonight.

And then there's the PP, which IMO is our real Achilles heel. It's handing any momentum we create to the opponent. Gotta think Yzerman sees it too.

But even good teams have flaws. At least ours are so apparent that we might be able to improve on one or two of them down the stretch.

 

[Todd1a]

TIL losing by one on the tail end of a back to back means you can't beat a team.

Bring on Boston in the playoffs. Not scared of them one bit.

right now we would play the redwings in round one which scares me since grand rapids beat are crunch who are pretty much the lightning now almost two years ago.

 

[Antiramie]

Even in some of these losses (particularly the two to the Kings), I feel like we're proving we can hang with the better teams in the league. We're right there.

We're also starting to feel the sting of Matt Carle's injury. Barbs managed to keep up for 4-5 games (he played something like 23 minutes one night) and then he got overwhelmed. Witkowski had his first truly bad game tonight.

And then there's the PP, which IMO is our real Achilles heel. It's handing any momentum we create to the opponent. Gotta think Yzerman sees it too.

But even good teams have flaws. At least ours are so apparent that we might be able to improve on one or two of them down the stretch.

Hanging with top teams and beating them are far from the same thing. Physical teams like LA don't pull away until later in the game when they've worn you down. Which is exactly what Cooper mentioned in the postgame. You have to take advantage of PPs and not have lapses on D that put you in the hole against teams that are built to outplay/outphysical you late.

I'm not more worried because of this game. I'm just still worried. We could easily fall to 6th-7th before the regular season is all said and done. And at that point we better hope we can hang with the big boys because we might be facing the top teams in the East come playoff time. I'm not really scared of any particular teams, but without a semblance of a PP, defensive consistency/health a major concern, and Stamkos not playing great... it's hard to think this team is a legit contender for a Stanley Cup run. Yes, things could change. But until we acquire a D-man and get the PP jump started, color me concerned.

 

[DFC]

Hanging with top teams and beating them are far from the same thing. Physical teams like LA don't pull away until later in the game when they've worn you down. Which is exactly what Cooper mentioned in the postgame. You have to take advantage of PPs and not have lapses on D that put you in the hole against teams that are built to outplay/outphysical you late.

I'm not more worried because of this game. I'm just still worried. We could easily fall to 6th-7th before the regular season is all said and done. And at that point we better hope we can hang with the big boys because we might be facing the top teams in the East come playoff time. I'm not really scared of any particular teams, but without a semblance of a PP, defensive consistency/health a major concern, and Stamkos not playing great... it's hard to think this team is a legit contender for a Stanley Cup run. Yes, things could change. But until we acquire a D-man and get the PP jump started, color me concerned.

We're easily as legit as anyone in the east right now. We match up poorly stylistically against some of teams while we match up well against others, but I think that's true for everyone. Pretty much every team has a glaring flaw or two right now. Our biggest one is the PP. If we can even get that thing on life support rather than just out and out dead, it'll be a huge difference. Starting to look like Yzerman won't be addressing that via acquisition, so it's up to Coop I guess.

Wouldn't be surprised to see us land a sturdy rental D though to take some of the pressure off.

 

[Boltsppy]

What about putting Boyle with Morrow together to the PP ?

 

[Antiramie]

What about putting Boyle with Morrow together to the PP ?

What about playing Boyle on D and bringing Brown back up until we acquire someone?

 

[Antiramie]

We're easily as legit as anyone in the east right now. We match up poorly stylistically against some of teams while we match up well against others, but I think that's true for everyone. Pretty much every team has a glaring flaw or two right now. Our biggest one is the PP. If we can even get that thing on life support rather than just out and out dead, it'll be a huge difference. Starting to look like Yzerman won't be addressing that via acquisition, so it's up to Coop I guess.

Wouldn't be surprised to see us land a sturdy rental D though to take some of the pressure off.

To be honest it might be a blessing in disguise to go into the playoffs as a lower seed, granted we don't get there because of bad play. I feel like we might respond better as an under-the-radar team than one getting hyped or dissected to no end.

Like I said, not fretting about any teams per se, especially in the East. But physical play gets ramped up, regardless of conference, and home-ice calls (and how teams respond to them) become even more critical come playoff time...that's my worry.

 

[LightningStrikes]

did drouin even play this period?

 

[Brie]

Saw the result when I woke up and while it wasn’t what I wanted to see if wasn’t very surprising. Looks like I didn’t miss much though since I did see some of the highlights and not a lot od things surprised me there either, did hate the Kopitar goal though, how you let a guy with that much skill get that much room and then just stand by and let him do what he wants with it was bad and I don’t understand why they did it but then I could see the whole play just what lead up to it…who knows, maybe the team thinks that all teams shot the way they do, right at the goalie making it an easy save for him, and not the way Kopitar did by lifting the puck and shoting it above Vasy’s pads…oh well, I can understand that they were tired, needs to rest up and then take on ANA who will also be well rested and wanting to get revenge on what happened last time.

Oh, and congrats to Nesterov for scoring his first goal.

 

[FinnLightning26]

What a surprise, atleast two of the three goals came because of bad defensive plays. I thought the effort was there but this defense is just killing us right now. We shouldn't wait until the deadline to get a defenseman and I suspect we'll get one during our four days off after this roadtrip.