The Tampa Bay Lightning were one of the NHL’s great up-and-coming teams. Then they were a legitimate contender, going on deep playoff runs two years in a row. Now, in the midst of a disastrous 2016-17, it isn’t entirely clear what they are, though we’ll try to shed some light on that here.
The first thing to realize about the collapse of the Lightning is that it is almost entirely a defensive issue. That’s a slight conceit because offence and defence are so interdependent at the NHL level, but there’s no question as to where the club has taken its lumps this year.
Offensively, the Bolts really haven’t been much different this season than last, despite the loss of Steven Stamkos to injury. At five-on-five, their shot numbers are almost identical and their shooting percentage is down a trivial amount. The power play, meanwhile, is having a splendid season.
Put it all together and the Lightning are on pace for 223 goals, just four fewer than they scored last season. The trouble is that in 2015-16 Tampa Bay surrendered just 201 goals, but the team is presently on pace to allow 239.
The underlying numbers are messy. Tampa allows more shots than last season and more of those shots turn to goals at five-on-five. The team allows the same number of shots against on the penalty kill as it did last year, but more of those shots turn to goals.
When we dig into the numbers, we find that the problem seems to be localized to specific defencemen. The automatic assumption is that Andrej Sustr or Jason Garrison or Braydon Coburn is the guy dragging down the unit, but when we look year-over-year the biggest drop-offs come from the big names: Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman.
With Hedman on the ice, the Lightning are three shots per hour and almost a goal per hour worse this year than last year. Stralman’s figures are even more ugly, as they’re more than three shots and a goal per hour worse from 2015-16.
Yet that statement is misleading, because Hedman/Stralman remains Tampa Bay’s best defence pair. The reason for the decline lies in how those two players performed when assigned to other partners.
The chart above shows every Lightning defence pair that’s spent more than an hour together at 5-on-5 this season and includes both shot attempts against in an average hour (CA/60) as well as goals (GA/60). Hedman and Stralman stand out — as a duo, they have brilliant numbers in both categories.
Both, though, fared rather poorly when playing with Nikita Nesterov, who was traded Thursday to Montreal for a meagre return. Nesterov is a left-shot defenceman who played the role of sheltered offensive specialist and left/right-side swingman on the Tampa Bay blue line.
The 23-year-old had his strong points, but his inability to mesh with either Hedman or Stralman must have been a black mark against him, particularly since those two pairings were the only Lightning tandems to start more than 50 per cent of their shifts in the offensive zone.
Garrison and the much-maligned Sustr lie at the other end of the usage chart, being loaded with defensive zone assignments. Where Nesterov has two offensive zone starts for every shift in the defensive zone, Sustr has the opposite split and Garrison isn’t far behind.
Given their usage, that duo looks OK together, but only because we’ve keyed in on defensive minutes. Garrison/Sustr get out-shot and out-scored, but they’re relatively low-event in the process. As decent as the goals and shots against numbers are, Tampa Bay generates absolutely no offence when this pairing is on the ice, which is of course its own problem.
It’s hard to get away from the idea that Tampa Bay’s big problem is a lack of depth on the blue line. Hedman/Stralman work wonderfully as a tandem, but keeping them paired means trying to scrape together a second unit from the other options.
Garrison is 32 and Braydon Coburn will be in a month; both are at that age when defencemen begin to rapidly erode. Sustr doesn’t have an age problem, but he’s been bumped up the depth chart and so far looks like he just may not be capable of handling the increased responsibility. Garrison/Stralman was a disaster, and while Hedman/Sustr didn’t bleed goals it’s been a pretty ugly two-way pairing.
This isn’t a particularly new thing, either. The Lightning had a 51 per cent Corsi rating with Victor Hedman on the ice in last year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, but fell by nearly five percentage points when he was on the bench.
All of these defensive problems are happening against the backdrop of a goaltending implosion, and it’s a little hard to believe they aren’t related. Not only have both Ben Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy crashed simultaneously, but with the Hedman/Stralman tandem on the ice they seem to return to normal. Behind other pairings, they burn.
A simple lack of defensive depth isn’t the whole picture, of course. All teams have weak points, but not all of them break. Tampa Bay, though, is under enormous pressure.
Injuries at all positions, many of them to key players and some of them stretching back to last season, weakened the franchise. It isn’t just players such as Stamkos and Ryan Callahan, either. Only two players on the team have dressed for all 50 games.
Playing 43 playoff games over the past two years may be taking a toll, particularly when mixed with this season’s compacted schedule. A dozen different Bolts competed in the World Cup, more than any other team. Arguably no NHL roster this season has had a tougher run of injuries and fatigue than the Lightning.
General manager Steve Yzerman would be well advised to address the specific positional weakness that has cost his team this season. There isn’t much anyone can do about injury and fatigue, though an early summer might end up being a blessing in disguise.
[relatedlinks]
