Thursday night’s game against the Detroit Red Wings was a huge opportunity for the Tampa Bay Lightning, as they hoped to establish they belonged with the top teams in the NHL. The main story line going into this one was the reuniting of former Red Wing great Steve Yzerman playing against his old team. In the end, the Lightning saw just how far they have to go, falling to the Red Wings by a final score of 6-2.
“They are a really good team and our standards have to be even higher,” Lightning Captain Vincent Lecavalier said. “We need to learn from this. We did come back in this game. We came back believing we could win.”
The Wings got off to a fast start in this one, jumping all over the Lightning in the early going with two quick goals. Dan Cleary got the Wings on the board with a power-play goal, his 18th of the year, and Pavel Datsyuk extended the lead less then ten minutes later with his 15th of the season.
As has been the case much of the year for the Lightning, they were able to fight back against the adversity that faced them and score two goals of their own to pull the game back even in the second period. First, it was a Victor Hedman shot from the point that deflected off Brian Rafalski and past goaltender Jimmy Howard to get the Lightning back within a goal. For Hedman it was his third goal of the year. Steve Downie would then get the game back to even for the Bolts a flubbed Stamkos shot deflected right to Downie, who put it home. For Downie, it was his 8th goal of the year.
From there, the Red Wings would take over the game, getting four straight goals from Niklas Kronwall, Justin Abdelkader, Pavel Datsyuk, and Darren Helm all scored for the Red Wings to put this game away.
One of the more disappointing aspects of this one was to look out from high above the St. Pete Times Forum, and literally see a sea of red jersey’s. The Red Wings have been known to travel well, but never in the history of this building has an opposing fan base taken over like that. To make matters worse, a member of the Lightning Ice Crew decided to follow a Detroit tradition and take an octopus thrown on to the ice and twirl it over his head toward the end of the game.
The Lightning would later decline comment.
Back to the on ice action, Lightning head coach Guy Boucher did not think that the final score was a fair testament to the Lightning’s play on the ice.
“We gave it everything we had, period,” Boucher said. “We just got beat by a better team than us. This is the best team in the league, the most experienced. They’ve got all their players and this is the standard in out league.”
The Lightning will have the opportunity to put this one behind them quickly as they face a division game on Saturday against the Florida Panthers. Puck drop in that one is at 7:30 PM at the St. Pete Times Forum.
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This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2011.