{"id":250311,"date":"2026-04-28T22:59:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/250311\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T22:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:59:01","slug":"crozier-hit-on-slafkovsky-could-prove-to-be-series-changer-for-lightning-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/250311\/","title":{"rendered":"Crozier hit on Slafkovsky could prove to be series-changer for Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crozier, a fourth-round pick (No. 120) by Tampa Bay at the 2019 NHL Draft, has 53 regular-season games on his resume, including one after Feb. 1 because of a lower-body injury that required surgery. The 6-3, 204-pound stay-at-home-defenseman understandably was dealing with some accrued rust and hadn\u2019t played this postseason prior to Sunday. In an attempt to alleviate that, he told assistant Dan Hinote he wanted to get some extra hitting in in case he\u2019d be called upon to play against Montreal in what has been a physical series.<\/p>\n

The result? Under\u00a0Hinote\u2019s watchful eye, Lightning forward Conor Geekie<\/a>\u00a0took runs at Crozier at Bell Centre on Saturday, a physical type of prep work that proved to be valuable in Game 4.<\/p>\n

Game 5 is at Benchmark International Arena in Tampa on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; The Spot, SN, CBC, TVAS).<\/p>\n

\u201cSince my surgery, I haven\u2019t had a lot of contact,\u201d\u00a0Crozier said. \u201cI think I got one game in during the last regular-season game against the (New York) Rangers (on April 15), but it was kind of like a shinny game, so I didn\u2019t really get hit. So before coming to this one, I know I wanted to get some contact before and feel it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

It obviously worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the fun in the game, and that\u2019s why I love it,\u201d he said. \u201cPlaying physical just comes naturally for me and I have fun doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slafkovsky spent a couple of minutes on the ice after being hit before heading to the dressing room. He was able to return and take regular shifts in the third.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hit obviously got our bench out of their seats,\u201d Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. \u201cBut you still have to take advantage of that. We score in the last minute of the second, and in the first minute of the third, and all of a sudden the game\u2019s completely changed. It helped take the crowd out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you\u2019re watching that game, you know that hit probably had a big thing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crozier, a fourth-round pick (No. 120) by Tampa Bay at the 2019 NHL Draft, has 53 regular-season games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-250311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}