Mishkin’s Reflections: About the First Four

What we’ve seen from the Lightning so far has been mostly good. Certainly there was a lot more good than not good.

Let’s start with the positive aspects. They won three of the first four. There were no “steals” among their victories. In other words, they deserved the wins. And even in their sloppy, error-filled performance Saturday in Ottawa, they battled through multiple deficits and lost by just a single goal.

The Lightning have placed an emphasis on being a better five-on-five team this year. Specifically, they want to allow fewer five-on-five goals than last year. They have only conceded five such goals in four games. At the same time, they scored 11 five-on-five goals themselves.

The trio of Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel have combined for 18 points so far this year. Kucherov is the first player in franchise history to score seven goals in the first four games of a season. The unit of Anthony Cirelli, Brandon Hagel and Nick Paul contributed four goals and 12 points.

Andrei Vasilevskiy, who missed the start of last season due to surgery, is healthy and looking good.

On the other side of the ledger is special teams play. While the power play and penalty kill played a big role in the Lightning’s season-opening win in Carolina, the units have suffered percentage losses in the last three games. The Lightning haven’t scored a power-play goal since their opener and missed two five-on-three chances. The PK has allowed four opposing power play goals in the last three games.

Is this a cause for concern? I do not believe that. Special teams play can be cyclical. Look out for the penalty shootout to tighten up as the season progresses. Many of the same players seeing PK time are back from last year’s team, which ranked fifth in PK percentage. New additions include the return of Ryan McDonagh as well as the arrivals of JJ Moser and Zemgus Girgensons. Then there is Vasilevskiy. There’s no reason to believe the Lightning won’t improve their PK percentage.

The power play is harder to predict as the Lightning are gearing up for a top unit without Steven Stamkos. But what I’ve seen so far hasn’t raised any alarm bells. The power play against Vancouver ended 0-5, largely because the Lightning had difficulty getting back into the offensive zone after the Canucks put the puck up the ice. The Lightning only had two PP chances against Vegas. They overlapped, leading to a long five-on-three duel. The Lightning created plenty of chances and looked sharp doing so. There were just three power plays in Ottawa on Saturday, including another (shorter) five-on-three. Although they failed to capitalize on their three chances, there was improvement in the game against Vancouver. After each clearing by Ottawa, the Lightning successfully got back into the O-Zone.

Ultimately, it’s too early to say that any of these statistics show clear trends early in the season. But the overall quality of the Lightning’s play was high. That’s the main reason why they were able to score six out of eight points.