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Greg WyshynskiESPN
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Tampa Bay Lightning will be defined by its failure, eliminated from the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs in the first round by a team from the Columbus Blue Jackets. Some thought that the winners of the Presidents Trophy were pending.
It's a way of looking at them.
This is the turn that the Lightning had after the superb 7-3 defeat of Tuesday night in the fourth game of the first round: they were victims of their own success.
The Lightning had 128 points in the regular season, with a points percentage of .780, the second highest rate in 82 games in the history of the NHL, behind the Detroit Red Wings 1995-1996 (.799). They tied the Red Wings with 62 wins, the largest number of more than 100 years of hockey history in the NHL. They won a playoff spot after just 68 games and ran well before reaching that mark. They did not just win, they crushed their opponents. They had the best power play of the league and the best shot at goal, and they were the team that got the highest average score (3.89) since Detroit in this 1995-1996 season. Of their 62 wins, 30 were scored by a margin of three goals or more, which was mostly the same since 1992-93.
Everything has happened so easily for Tampa Bay – until it does not happen.
Missing a Stanley Cup Playoff Game 2019? Want to relive a game? Each playoff game is available for retransmission on ESPN +. Watch now "
"When you have the number of points we had, it's kind of a blessing and a curse, you do not play meaningful hockey for a long time, and then all of a sudden you have to do it." "It's not an excuse, it's the reality," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said after Game Four, "It's like this: you have a regular season. and we had historic playoffs. "
Indeed, the Lightning went into history in the 2019 playoffs – this is just not the kind of sport that a coach would want. For the first time in league history, a team with the most points in the regular season failed to win a game in a seven round-robin series opening .
"If we had the answers, we would have found a way to win a game, which is bad," said captain Steven Stamkos.
The amazing disappearance of the Lightning is based on obvious factors:
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The Blue Jackets set up a defensive clinic in the series, playing 1: 2 in check before, slowing the pace, belonging to the neutral zone and never allowing the Lightning to find his offensive path. The Jackets have collected 30 points in four games, against 21 for Tampa Bay. "Columbus is good enough to close it in. They never did it in the regular season because they were always chasing us," Cooper said. "The last time we played here, we had a 5-1 lead and they eliminated us completely, we just scored every time we went on the ice."
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Blue Jackets goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky posted the best playoff performance of his career with a .932 save percentage and 2.01 goals against average. Even when the Lightning passed the Columbus defense, Bobrovsky made decisive saves. In contrast, Tampa Bay goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy finished the series with a save percentage of 0.856 and an average of 3.82.
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The biggest disparity was perhaps that of the special teams. The Lightning has had the most potent power play since 1988-89 in the regular season at 28.1%. They were playing against a team that missed the least amount of time in the regular season. The Lightning scored one goal on just six power play opportunities in this series; The Blue Jackets, meanwhile, were excellent with 5 on 10. "No power play.a PP in two games.It's hard.I do not know what to say," said Nikita Kucherov, l & # 39, the Lightning's star winger who won the NHL goal of the season.
Kucherov was suspended for the third game of the series for an illegal check in the second match. Star defenseman Victor Hedman was injured in the second and second games and missed the last two games of the series.
When asked if this Core Lightning could still capture a Stanley Cup at full power, Stamkos replied, "Yes, we believe in it.But it's one thing to say it, and that's another They have run a detailed game plan to slow us down, we have not had an answer, you have to give them credit, everyone will talk about our loss of the series, but they have did a lot of good things, we just did not have an answer. "
This nucleus was reunited when the Lightning lost in the final phase of the 2016 conference, losing Games 6 and 7 instead of Penguins of Pittsburgh. It was together when they lost the Games 6 and 7 (again) against the Washington Capitals last season. Against the Blue Jackets, they lost a 3-0 lead in the first game and never recovered after the Jackets victory.
"I do not know," Cooper said when asked if there was a fundamental flaw in the way the team was dealing with adversity. "It's funny: we should go far this year and we're not going anywhere." In 2015, no one expected us to go anywhere, and we went far, with the same core of players.
"It's hard to win in this league, it's hard not to delay the Stanley Cup at the end, but how many teams have come in. They knock on the door and knock on the door and then .. You look at Washington, for example, they had two remarkable years and were sent back to the second round, and the year nobody expected them to do anything, they won the Stanley Cup. "
From October 6, 2018 to April 6, 2019, the Lightning were favorites to win the Stanley Cup and one of the most dominant regular season teams in the history of the league.
Then the playoffs started.
"We did not find our game." It's as clear as that – for six days in April, we could not find it, "Cooper said. "It's unfortunate because it involves what has been a regular season of hell."
Stamkos added: "If you do not reach the goal of winning everything, it's a failure – we do not care about what happened in the regular season."
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