The Tampa Bay Lightning put a bow on the 2025-26 NHL season on Tuesday morning with an end of season media availability at Benchmark International Arena.<\/p>\n
Several Lightning players, as well as Vice President and General Manager Julien BriseBois, answered questions both to wrap up the year and preview what could be coming this summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need breaks to win a championship, but first and foremost, you need an excellent hockey team. And we had an excellent hockey team this year,\u201d BriseBois said. \u201cWe’re gonna have an excellent hockey team again next year, just based on the players that we expect to have coming back. I have a reason to believe that we’re going to be a contender again next season. We’re going to be fighting for a playoff spot. We’re going to be driven to do better than we did this year, and I believe we will do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are four takeaways from Tuesday in the latest edition of the FourCheck:<\/p>\n
Lightning veterans expect more from themselves<\/p>\n
Nearly every player who stood behind the microphone on Tuesday said they expect more from themselves following a fourth consecutive exit in the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n
Brandon Hagel led the team on offense with eight points, and his six postseason goals matched the franchise record for goals in a playoff series. He still wasn\u2019t satisfied with his playoff performance, particularly when the series was tied 2-2 coming back to Tampa for Game 5.<\/p>\n
Montreal won Game 5 by a 3-2 score in an effort that displeased the Lightning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Game 7 we gave up nine shots, so it’s not on them (coaches). It’s not on anyone,\u201d Hagel said. \u201cYou put on a performance like that, you’re gonna win 99.9% of the time. But you go out in Game 5 and your best players aren\u2019t your best players, starting with myself, to take a lead in the series, to give yourself a little bit more comfortability, probably one of the biggest games in the series\u2026It’s just unacceptable\u2026In games like that, you\u2019ve got to show up, and I don\u2019t think our best players did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forward Brayden Point finished with one goal in the playoffs. He plans to spend time this summer focused on his shooting in preparation for next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially in a series that’s so tight, a couple of goals would\u2019ve went a long way.\u00a0 A lot of that\u2019s on me. You gotta find a way to produce and you need guys from all lines to score in the playoffs. And again, I wasn’t a part of that. It’s tough, but you\u2019ve got to look yourself in the mirror and see why, and you\u2019ve got to work on those things in the summer now to hopefully not let it happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Point suffered injuries during the regular season but said he was healthy for the playoffs. He finished the regular season with 18 goals, the first time since 2017 that he scored less than 20 goals.<\/p>\n
He wants to improve on releasing shots, getting pucks off his stick in tight and \u201cincreasing the scoring zone\u201d for himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can learn from it, and I’ve definitely learned some things in my game that I need to get better at and now it\u2019s about putting in the work,\u201d Point said. \u201cThis summer’s gonna be a great opportunity for me to work on those things that I identified. Sometimes the way you played in the past doesn’t always work when you get older, and the game kind of changes, so now it’s about just putting in the work so you can produce at a level that\u2019s gonna help the team win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nikita Kucherov said regardless of the fact that the team pushed their series against the Montreal Canadiens to seven games, it doesn\u2019t matter without the final victory.<\/p>\n
He said the team has to be better at 5-on-5 play and create more scoring chances. He said the team can improve in every area in preparation for next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it got better,\u201d he said of executing under pressure. \u201cBut at the same time, my game had to be better. It wasn\u2019t, so it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy credited his team for being better defensively this year but said the team needs to do its job on all fronts.\u00a0He won\u2019t accept any of the \u2018hockey gods\u2019 talk about who deserved what result in a tilted Game 7 or this postseason as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all have to do our jobs. Me, I have to make saves. Defense has to block shots, kill penalties,\u201d Vasilevskiy said. \u201cOffense, they should score goals. We all have to do our jobs. But when one part of the team does the job good enough to win, the other doesn\u2019t, that’s how you end your season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Lightning put a bow on the 2025-26 NHL season on Tuesday morning with an end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-259641","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\/259641","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=259641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}