| Trust in process meaningful for this Lightning team |
| We haven't seen the Lightning play that much hockey this season, but we've seen enough to know that they pale in comparison to last season's Stanley Cup championship team. They are flawed. The injury to Nikita Kucherov has exposed some depth issues, and their power-play unit is broken without him. Having said that, we've seen before how the Lightning can adapt. Lightning coach Jon Cooper's mantra is "Process Over Outcome," and the past two seasons the team evolved as the season progressed and played its best hockey when it mattered the most. There's no reason to believe they can't do it again. They have lost games they probably deserved to win, like Saturday's shootout loss to Colorado and Monday's setback in Buffalo. A revamped penalty-kill unit has played well, and the Lightning have showed a unique comeback ability in overtime wins in Detroit and Washington. Over the past two games, they've shown how important playing with a lead can be. They jumped on a bad Arizona team Thursday night and made good on their opening-night rematch against the Penguins on the back end of a back-to-back road trip. "Chasing games is no fun because then you put more risk in your game," forward Pat Maroon said. "You're doing stuff that you usually don't do. You're turning more pucks over. You're making more high-risk plays. You're taking chances. So I think the most important thing right now is just to, you know, when we do get the lead, how are we going to handle that situation?" -- Eduardo A. Encina, Times staff writer |
No comments:
Post a Comment