Pre-Game Talk: Lightning vs Leafs | January 28th, 7pm EST | TSN

[Bluejaysfan*]

we generally do.
I just looked back at last year's games, and we lost the series, but they were all 'close" (they won 4-2, we won 4-2 and then they won 5-2). tampa is one of the few teams in the league [I'd put Winnipeg, Dallas, and Chicago up there] that can really match and/or surpass us with their speed. Ergo - if we're on - it becomes a track meet, which suits both teams and if they aren't on - we burn them, and vice versa.

I truly believe and feel that we're winning tomorrow. [actually, I'm going to put this out there. We're winning all three games. Regulation [no overtime] vs. Tampa and Ottawa, and Im going to say a shootout against Florida, because well they are Florida]. I have full faith in this team and I think that they know they are in a perfect situation just before the Olympic break to really break away from Montreal [even with games in hand, now we're in the driver's seat in that aspect], Detroit & Ottawa.


6 point week. Yeup.

It would be pretty cool if the Leafs could end up playing the Bolts in the playoffs as a first round match up. 2 great offenses and 2 great goalies. Would be neat if Leaf Nation could take over their arena during the playoffs as well. Cant really do that against teams like Boston or Montreal.

 

[dimi78]

Talk about not using injuries as an excuse for failure.

Lightning are the poster child to support this, as missing Stamkos one of the best players on the planet and not missing a beat as a team tied for 2nd in the Eastern conference standings.

Our Leafs are not missing a Stamkos but are not able to keep up with the Lightening. TB finished 3rd last overall last season while the Leafs made the playoffs.

Why are TB outperforming the Leafs this year?

Hockey is a team sport not an individual one... Star players don't have this impact that we all think by placing them on a pedestal that winning is in due part because of them. Star players are just a piece to the puzzle with jobs to do no different than the depth guys. They're the sexy guys that sell the entertainment value of the game to put butts in the seats that's where star players have impact not really when it comes to winning. Winning starts from goaltending and a team playing as one with each peace executing what there job is.

Only goaltending makes a drastic impact between winning & losing that's why it's the most important position for every team... without it you get a Stamkos with 60 goals and a team picking in the lottery

You might be impressed or surprised with Tampa but I'm not. Goaltending was they're achilles these past couple of years now that they 're getting good goaltending your seeing a good hockey team that is winning.

 

[PuckMagi]

any word on whether clarkson will be back for this game?

 

[Leaf Rocket]

any word on whether clarkson will be back for this game?

dont think so. not that i've heard or seen anything.

 

[JMcLeaf]

any word on whether clarkson will be back for this game?

Last Thursday Siegel tweeted that Carlyle said Clarkie will be out for at least another week. That's the most recent update I could find.

 

[Jacko95]

He guys Tampa fan here,
first off, I have to say I am very impressed by you guys. You guys give is Credit for our good play, while many other fanbases still belief we are not for real and think they can get an Easy win, especially because they don't know 2/3s of our roster.

the main difference between the Leafs & the Lightning is that A: we don't have older support players for our team, B: we're still very young with rookies who haven't played in 3+ seasons in key positional spots. so yes. if we were missing say just Kessel and we were horrendous - you may have had a point.

You do realize that Tampa carries 7 rookies right now and just send two others down, who have been up all year (Sustr and Panik)? Oh and we have second year pro and 2nd year NHLer Killorn on top of the 7 rookies as well.
So the argument with having a young team is not the best idea in this conversation.

 

[Daisy Jane]

He guys Tampa fan here,
first off, I have to say I am very impressed by you guys. You guys give is Credit for our good play, while many other fanbases still belief we are not for real and think they can get an Easy win, especially because they don't know 2/3s of our roster.

You do realize that Tampa carries 7 rookies right now and just send two others down, who have been up all year (Sustr and Panik)? Oh and we have second year pro and 2nd year NHLer Killorn on top of the 7 rookies as well.
So the argument with having a young team is not the best idea in this conversation.

sorry- - I actually didn't know that!
'the more you know!" theme

I do know that Tampa is a relatively young team though, but again you guys are really lucky to have St Louis and other older players on the team. the oldest guy on our team - 30. [that still always blows my mind]. I didn't mean to diminish the play or the circumstances at all - it's just more of this circular argument that people have been making lately that "Oh - team X has 1 player out, or team Y has this and THEY don't use it as an excuse." and it frustrates me

i always liked Tampa, and y'all ARE tough. like I mentioned - there are only a few teams in the entire league that can match the Leafs speed for speed, and we usually give each other fits, regardless of where each team is in the standings. so It's going to be quite an interesting series now that we're both A: are in the same division, and B: seven points behind you

have a great game tonight
[though, you know, the Leafs are winning tonight]

 

[Lord Stan 2020]

Good luck this is important tampa faces the atlantic 15 times in last 30 I think good news is we finish with a huge homestand and stamkos should be back than.

One note I know a lot of you were not paying attention to us much. We at points had so many injuries we had like 10 kids playing at the same time was insane. Was minor injuries not broken legs like stamkos was still 1 week 2 week things.

I still cant believe how well we weathered that storm. The interesting thing is yes we are young but we really dont have losing streaks we bounce right back after the weird occasional bad outing. A true sign of a good team and a winning mentality.

Hedman missed 7 games so far Gudas 5 Salo 9 Malone a bunch Sustr missed some time and Aulie missed a bunch. Pyatt missed like over a month along with Aulie. Barberio missed a little and Brewer 5 games. So entire defensive unit besides carle has been injured at points this season at one point seemed the whole team was injured lol.


We are very lucky to have soo much good youth no one has really come up and not contributed in some way at least a little.

Good luck should be a fun game to see how we match up with a more physical team.

 

[Warden of the North]

Pretty sure I read that Smith is game ready. He might draw in.

 

[SprDaVE]

Pretty sure I read that Smith is game ready. He might draw in.

I'd send him down. Decent depth forward but I much prefer having Holland in that top 9 then Smith.

He's the Marlies captain anyway, might as well actually make him play there to get his conditioning up.

 

[FDfranklin]

What was their excuse last year? They had an identical team. Your argument is invalid.

LOOLOLOLOLOLOL

Not sure if sarcasm but it's hardly the same team.

Tampa fan coming in peace though. I've really been looking forward to this game, it's strange the season is half way over and we have yet to play each other.

I think this will be a great game to watch and like having you guys in the top 3 instead of MTL! Good luck tonight guys.

 

[AlphaCatalyst]

Hey Guys another Lightning fan coming in to say hi, and good luck tonight.
As Jacko said nice to see you giving us some credit, thanks. But this post did catch my eye

What was their excuse last year? They had an identical team. Your argument is invalid.

LOOLOLOLOLOLOL

Not sure how this years team is anywhere close to identical to last years. As Jacko pointed out we have 7 rookies on the team. Plus Valtteri Filppula was acquired in the offseason to replace Lecavalier. The coach Jon Cooper only was with the team 16 games and Bishop 9.
So if this post was sarcasm and I missed sorry, otherwise you may want to consult a dictionary about what Identical means.

Good luck tonight and hope for a clean, injury free game.

 

[TheLeastOfTheBunch]

Surprising to see how high Tampa's up in the standings. Could be a case of them "overachieving." Both of their leading scorers are shooting at ~20%..

We have a number of games remaining against them, hopefully we can catch up

 

[Mess]

Hey Guys another Lightning fan coming in to say hi, and good luck tonight.
As Jacko said nice to see you giving us some credit, thanks. But this post did catch my eye

Not sure how this years team is anywhere close to identical to last years. As Jacko pointed out we have 7 rookies on the team. Plus Valtteri Filppula was acquired in the offseason to replace Lecavalier. The coach Jon Cooper only was with the team 16 games and Bishop 9.

So if this post was sarcasm and I missed sorry, otherwise you may want to consult a dictionary about what Identical means.

Good luck tonight and hope for a clean, injury free game.

Its not close to last years team.

As you know your Lightninig finished 3rd from the bottom of the standings and through changes and improvement are ahead of our Leafs (despite missing Stamkos). Its pretty impressive what Copper is doing and Ben Bishop has stabilized the team in net.

Valtteri Filppula was an excellent UFA signing providing 19 goals and 40 points which would tie JVR (our 2nd leading scorer in points). Victor Hedman is coming into his own now with 10 goals 20 assists and 32 points >> Phaneuf at 5-16-21 points our best Dman.

Martin St. Louis is scoring at Kessel pace and Bishop > Bernier and it easy to see why TB is ahead of Tor. Stamkos is on the way soon to really tip the scales in the Lightnings favour.

Should be a good game tonight.

 

[Hurt]

We play the Lightning 4 times including tonight. Need to have a strong statement game before Stamkos comes back.

 

[LEAFSIN4]

It would be pretty cool if the Leafs could end up playing the Bolts in the playoffs as a first round match up. 2 great offenses and 2 great goalies. Would be neat if Leaf Nation could take over their arena during the playoffs as well. Cant really do that against teams like Boston or Montreal.

i get 75% off Bolts tickets through my workplace so I'd be down with that lol

 

[Wafflewhipper]

Just a nice solid 60 minutes without giving up many shots with nice puck support is what I would like to see tonight. Tampa has scored as many goals in two fewer games but have allowed 40 fewer.

So we need to be defensively prepared. Why we sit where we are in the standings is a matter of some rare luck and timely good hockey to this point. There is so many aspects in the stats that would make you believe this not a good team if you did not see the standings.

Indecision defensively tonight would kill us and the defensive game needs to improve.

We own the third worst G.A per game in the league. Edmonton and the Islanders are the only 2 teams to give up more goals I noticed today?? That is just incredible.Carlyle has some issues to work out here.

 

[Stats01]

Boy oh boy this is an important week. We can either sink or swim, we grab 4-6 points we maintain/increase our lead on the teams behind us or we lose 2 out of 3 or worst case scenario completely lose it and lose all 3 and then we're ****ed. Behind teams trying to catch up while they have games in hand on us. WE HAVE TO KEEP WINNING! GO LEAFS GO!!!

 

[mcleex]

Does anyone even notice or care that Clarkson isn't even out there? My God what a disaster this season has been for him

We better ****ing win this game, too many divisional match-ups tonight. No 3 point games!!!

 

[Wafflewhipper]

Boy oh boy this is an important week. We can either sink or swim, we grab 4-6 points we maintain/increase our lead on the teams behind us or we lose 2 out of 3 or worst case scenario completely lose it and lose all 3 and then we're ****ed. Behind teams trying to catch up while they have games in hand on us. WE HAVE TO KEEP WINNING! GO LEAFS GO!!!

Your in for a emotional final 28 games lol. This post sums up the rest of the season.

 

[Pi]

Tampa is playing darn well this season but we need this game so much more than them...this team better play well tonight.

We have played more games than most of the league so we need to make sure we are getting points so the game in hand the teams have don't matter.

I missed the old days when the Lightning was a near automatic win under Sundin...now I think it's the opposite. We are an automatic win for the Florida teams

I bet we could beat the Bruins on any given day but we can't beat the Panthers.

 

[Stats01]

Your in for a emotional final 28 games lol. This post sums up the rest of the season.

You're right lol. I'm already getting nervous, this is crazy. I know 28 games is a lot of points available but we all know that a 3-4 game losing streak can really turn things around. We had a pretty good road trip so we just need to have a good final stretch before the Olympic break. I also want to avoid finishing in any of the WC spots. Facing Boston again would be a disaster IMO and I want to avoid Pittsburgh as long as possible. If we can face a Montreal or TB in the first round I'd definitely take that. So maintaining or increasing our lead in 3rd place in the division is key Plus we face TB 4 times so there's 8 points we can gain on TB for 2nd.

 

[Stats01]

Does anyone even notice or care that Clarkson isn't even out there? My God what a disaster this season has been for him

We better ****ing win this game, too many divisional match-ups tonight. No 3 point games!!!

To be honest, if Clarkson missed the rest of the season I don't think the team would miss a beat. His first season here couldn't have gone any worse. Like seriously it's really hard to defend that contract after year 1. It's been a disaster so far. The only way I see year 1 being legitimate is if he comes back and tears it up in the playoffs, anything less and this season gets thrown out the window. And to think we have him for another 6 years after this 1, holy ****. He's gotta get his **** together. This year really got into his head, and it obviously started with him completely overreacting and being an idiot by jumping over the boards in a ****ing pre-season game..He needs to finish the year strong, get any type of expectations out of his head, play the game like he did in NJ and re-group finish strong and come back next season and act like this year never happened. Cause a lot of us wish it never did.

 

[Mess]

Plus we face TB 4 times so there's 8 points we can gain on TB for 2nd.

TB should have Steven Stamkos back for in at least 3 of those 4 games so its not going to get any easier.

 

[Stats01]

TB should have Steven Stamkos back for in at least 3 of those 4 games so its not going to get any easier.

You're right but there are still 8 points there to be taken. We've all seen how this team can play when our heads are not up our *****. We can beat anybody, I'm not scared of Stamkos, he's one player. We've beaten Sidney and the Penguins before so this is nothing new. We play the way we can play and we should be able to come away most of the time with a W.

Would be nice if Randy could tell Franson to stop playing like a little girl. Hitting somebody would be helpful, never someone with his size play with such weakness. He's almost scared of contact. The guy is a great offensive d-man on the PP but boy oh boy we need him to step up his game like a few others but Franson is one guy who boggles my mind. What happened to the Franson from the playoffs? He just completely disappeared.