The Tampa Bay Lightning wrapped up the best preseason in franchise history on Saturday with a game that might have left the seats in the penalty boxes warm at Amerant Bank Arena.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay allowed two power-play goals and another at 4-on-4 in the first period of a 7-0 loss to the Florida Panthers. The Lightning end the preseason with a 6-1-0 record.<\/p>\n
The regular season opens on Oct. 9 when the Ottawa Senators visit Benchmark International Arena in Tampa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn preseason we try to go out and get ready for the season,\u201d forward Oliver Bjorkstrand said, \u201cand I just thought we battled hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay rested much of its expected opening night lineup for Saturday\u2019s game, which saw the teams combine for 312 penalty minutes and 14 players removed from the game due to misconduct penalties. That combined penalty minute total would rank inside the top 10 all-time among regular season games in NHL history.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s physicality followed a Thursday game in Tampa in which the same teams combined for 186 penalty minutes in a 5-1 Tampa Bay win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two Florida teams have had a lot of success in this league the last six years, and I think anybody that\u2019s been a part of this rivalry would probably look at this box score and probably A) not be surprised and B) be like \u2018 I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s taken this long for something like that to happen.\u2019 It\u2019s two extremely proud franchises, and the boys played with their hearts on their sleeves,\u201d Lightning coach Jon Cooper said postgame.<\/p>\n
Florida scored two power-play goals in the first period and added another at 4-on-4 before scoring two more on the man advantage in the middle frame. Florida finished with six power-play goals in the win, while the Lightning penalty kill erased 13 Florida power plays.<\/p>\n
Forward Dominic James led Tampa Bay with 27:01 of time on ice.<\/p>\n
Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy made his preseason debut on Saturday, stopping 20 Florida shots on goal, including six of seven at even strength. Vasilevskiy\u2019s appearance came after he missed some time in training camp due to injury, and Cooper said the Lightning got everything they hoped to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake away the special teams, take away the score. We didn\u2019t care about that,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cTo us, it was, how did he feel? How was his conditioning and everything? And it was all great. He\u2019s on track and where he wants to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay also got a look at newest training camp addition goaltender Pheonix Copley, who made 11 saves on 12 shots after he took over for the third period. Copley was claimed by Tampa Bay via waivers from the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay\u2019s focus now turns to the regular season as the Lightning seek to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a ninth straight season.<\/p>\n
Benjamin\u2019s Three Stars:<\/p>\n
Evan Rodrigues, FLA (3 Goals, Assist)<\/p>\n
Eetu Luostarinen, FLA (4 Assists)<\/p>\n
Sergei Bobrovsky, FLA (15 saves)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Lightning wrapped up the best preseason in franchise history on Saturday with a game that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-191008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}