In the NHL playoffs, wins rule the day. Sixteen victories equal a Stanley Cup Championship. During the regular season, however, points are the name of the game. That’s because playoff qualification is based on a team’s point total, not the number of wins (unless there’s a tiebreaker). And the best way to accumulate points is to defend well.
As Jon Cooper often states, there’s a big difference between holding the opposition to two goals or fewer and allowing three or more. With two or less, your team has an excellent chance to gain points. If the other team reaches three, the outcome begins to hang in the balance.
Look at last year’s ranking of teams by defensive numbers (goals allowed per game). The best 15 defensive teams all qualified for the playoffs. The 16th club was Calgary, which missed the playoffs only because it lost the tiebreaker with St. Louis. The one playoff qualifier not in the top half of the league defensively was Montreal. Incidentally, the Canadiens finished with five fewer points than the Flames. In other words, the top 16 defensive teams ended up as the top 16 point-total teams.
There can be outliers. Two years ago, the Lightning ranked 22nd in team defense and qualified for the playoffs. But the goals against number (and corresponding five-on-five goals ratio) was disconcerting enough to GM Julien Brisebois that he prioritized team defense when he restructured the roster during the summer of 2024.
A big part of the Lightning’s regular-season success in 2024-25 was their defensive improvement from the year before. Tampa Bay finished fourth in goals allowed per game and third in five-on-five goals ratio.
The commitment to defending well will be just as significant this season. The Lightning didn’t start well in that regard, allowing numerous scoring chances in their first two home games. The opposition scored 10 goals in those two games, but they easily could have tallied more.
That’s why the last two contests have been encouraging. The Lightning improved defensively in gaining three of four points to begin the four-game road trip, and they were better defensively in Washington on Tuesday than they’d been in Boston on Monday. We’ll see if they can keep building up that part of their game when they resume the trip on Friday in Detroit.