It has been a rough start to the season in Tampa. The Lightning have six points through the first 14 games, giving up 42 goals while only scoring 26. That is nowhere near the start they were looking for coming off a playoff run last season. There hasn’t been one glaring hole on this team, it has been a collective underperformance from the entire group. Goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic started very strong, even with the team not winning, having a save percentage around 91% early on, but that has dropped to 89% with him giving up over 4 goals a game over the last couple of games.
Overall, the team is only scoring around 2 goals a game and are giving up 3. The expectation was for those numbers to be reversed at minimum. Klim Kostin is the only bright spot in the forward group. He has 11 points through the 14 games. When all six of your defensemen are in the top 11 in points on your team, that is not a good sign.
There really needs to be more production up front in order to get this team back on track. It is going to start with a shake up in the lineup, mostly in the forward group, to see if that will start to turn things around. If that doesn’t work, there may need to be some bigger moves made to send a message that this isn’t acceptable.
The front office is going to give this group a chance to show they can start putting the puck in the net, but it can’t be too patient, or it will be too late.
9/22/2023 - 277 words
