Game 51 - Buffalo at Tampa Bay

Well, the game started out well. Unfortunately, it didn't end so well. However, despite the 4-2 score, the Lightning are definitely moving in the right direction. The unfortunate part was the second period where no one was shooting.

Shooting - that was the thing I left off of my laundry list. They need to do a lot more of it, and on a more consistent basis. It doesn't matter if it's a pretty shot, they just need to put pucks on net from anywhere and everywhere and as many as possible.

The good: Holmqvist was, again, one of the best players on the ice tonight. The Lightning dominated in the faceoff circle. The team played far more consistently throughout the game than they have been I thought, other than the shots on goal, of course. And I felt that they had a lot of good energy and focus all gamea , too.

The bad: Poor passing in the neutral zone - particularly in the first period. Short passes in the neutral zone is what they need to do, but they keep trying to make long passes thru there and those keep getting picked off. Offsides was also a problem in the first period.

Tampa Bay seemed to be a more confident team, a better prepared team, and a more consistent team than before. It's too bad that they lost tonight, but as I said before, they're looking lot better than they have in a while.

I will be attending the Vancouver at Tampa Bay game at the Forum on Thursday, so my post will probably be a bit later that night than they have been recently. Apparently, Luongo - who skipped the All-Star Game to be with his pregnant wife in South Florida - was allowed to skip tonight's Canuck game in Vancouver so he could avoid all of the traveling. So Vancouver will have a fresh goalie in net Thursday, however the rest of the team will have traveled after playing tonight at home. It'll be interesting to see how well Luongo plays.

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