![\"Bolts](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/B529BBB04D06A2523A45AB36EC9762D6.jpg\")
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TAMPA – The first 10 games of the season for the Lightning have been anything but a breeze.<\/p>\n
“We were throwing risk in our game when we didn’t need to,” said head coach Jon Cooper.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“(We were) trying to manufacture offense out of nothing and, obviously, it burned us.”<\/p>\n
Burnt by six losses from their first seven games of the 2025-26 season, the Bolts looked nothing like the team fans had come to expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not an effort thing,” Cooper said.<\/p>\n
“The boys are always giving their all. We weren’t playing the smartest hockey.”<\/p>\n
Now, the Bolts have seemingly smartened up and strung together three straight wins to give themselves a bit of a confidence boost after the slow start to the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
“We were trying to find our groove there and the ups and downs of a season change fast,” said defenseman Ryan McDonagh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We talk about the process a lot, and you just have to trust the process,” said defenseman Victor Hedman.<\/p>\n
“I overheard Mac (McDonagh) say it, but three games is just a sample size of a season. We can’t get too high and can’t get too low. You just have to be consistent with what you do on the ice.”<\/p>\n
Other News: The College Football Playoff National Championship will return to Tampa in 2029<\/a><\/p>\n Regardless of the small sample size, nobody in the Bolts’ locker room is going to complain about starting to stack wins together.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those wins, however, have done little to give the Bolts any breathing room this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It put us in a .500 hockey team, so there’s no breathing room in this league,” Hedman said.<\/p>\n By the numbers:<\/p>\n Despite the three wins in a row, the Bolts still sit sixth in the Atlantic Division with 10 points through 10 games played.<\/p>\n “There’s always a new test, a new challenge, a new game,” Hedman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n While there may always be a new game, the Bolts are hoping they’re starting to find theirs.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We’ve liked a lot about our game the last few, but it’s about being consistent and bringing that effort and that execution each and every night,” McDonagh said.\u00a0<\/p>\n What’s next:<\/p>\n The Lighting host Dallas on Thursday night at Benchmark International Arena before beginning a four-game road trip starting in Utah on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Source: The information in this story was gathered during a Lightning morning skate and subsequent open locker room media availabilities by FOX 13 Sports Reporter Sean Barie.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a>Sports<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA – The first 10 games of the season for the Lightning have been anything but a breeze.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9662,5691,110,135,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-27258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-lightning","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tampa","12":"tag-tampa-headlines","13":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27258","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=27258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}