Stevie Nicks famously sang the line “Lightning strikes / maybe once, maybe twice.” But on Tuesday night, Tampa Bay exceeded Ms. Nicks’s expectations, lighting up the night with four goals as they beat the league-best Avalanche to extend their win streak to eight games.
It was tense and tight throughout, as the Bolts came back from a 2-1 deficit at the midpoint and could only exhale once they potted the empty-netter. Jake Guentzel opened the scoring for the Lightning late in the first on the power play, when he had approximately one billion years to aim and fire from close range. The Avs responded in the second with a neat rebound goal and then a Brock Nelson softie. A depth Lightning who’s taken on a slightly larger role this year—Zemgus “Big Z” Girgensons—knotted the score back up with a tap-in late in the second. And the big moment came eight-and-a-half minutes into the third, when Nikita Kucherov drew a double team with a dance along the boards in the O-zone, then offloaded the puck into a two-on-one look for a Brandon Hagel winner. Kuch has some tough competition if he wants to lead the NHL in assists for a third straight year, but plays like these remind you why he’s one of the league’s most valuable players.
The Avalanche were heading into this game off a rare loss, falling 2-1 to the Panthers on Sunday. Still, beating them still qualifies as a major event for any team, even one as experienced as Tampa. Colorado’s 31-4-7 record makes them obvious favorites for the Presidents’ Trophy. But over in the East, nobody’s got a better points percentage or a better goal differential than the Bolts, who’ve shaken off a rough start to December to reassert their place in the NHL’s vanguard.
A remarkably consistent run of regular-season success has been overshadowed by what the Lightning have done in the playoffs since going two-for-three in the Stanley Cup Final: a trio of consecutive first-round exits, including two straight five-game drubbings against their in-state rivals. While those Panthers are probably an unfair measuring stick, the Lightning have seemed a franchise in slow decline. Add in an injury to top defenseman Victor Hedman that has caused him to miss over half the season, and it wasn’t hard to believe, up until recently, that the Lightning could be overlooked.
If you did, these last few weeks have hit with the sudden shock and intensity of … well, a punch to the mouth from 6-foot-9 Tampa goon Curtis Douglas. How are they doing it? There are plenty of departed guys from that mini-dynasty of a few years past that the franchise would have loved to keep, but the top of this roster is still performing as well as nearly any in the league. Kucherov’s a wizard. Guentzel’s made a lucrative living off turning great passes into great goals. Hagel and Anthony Cirelli make for one of the world’s most dangerous two-way duos. Longtime cornerstone Brayden Point is enduring a down year but seems on the road to recovery. In the defensive corps, J.J. Moser and Darren Raddysh, once bargain-bin finds, have both proved more than capable of handling top-pairing responsibilities. And goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, while not producing one of the league’s most statistically spectacular seasons, has been especially good at keeping bad nights to a minimum.
Even the younger guys on the Lightning—looking at you, Gage Goncalves and Maxwell Crozier—likely understand that eight straight wins in the dead of winter aren’t anything to throw a big party about. Jon Cooper’s boys have almost always been able to take the playoffs for granted and throw all their focus into making a deep run. For that reason, there’s nothing bold to declare about this edition of the Bolts until they get tested in a seven-game series. But this stretch has got to have them feeling like they can compete with anyone—even their cross-state bêtes noires. Like Stevie sang, “[Hockey] players only love you when they’re playing [well].”
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