Game 53 - Florida at Tampa Bay

The Lightning played a really good game - the second really good game in a row. The put in a full 60-minute effort, again, had great energy, and had plenty of shots on goal. However, they did lose to the Florida Panthers late in the third period.

Their one nagging inconsistent problem for the night was playing in their own end. For the first half of the first period, and for much of the third period, they had problems containing the Panthers defensively. And not just the Lightning defensemen, but the forwards as well. Particularly at the end of the game, they would all bunch up together leaving one side of the net completely open to attack. That's how Florida scored the last goal of the game, in fact. They should've been spread out around the zone, but that's easy for me to say, right?

Goaltending was very good at both ends. Ramo did a great job, I thought. The goaltenders get a lot of unnecessary crap on this team, and I don't think that's very fair to them. I mean, there are only a handful of premier goaltenders in the league, so not everyone can be Martin Brodeur, you know.

Penalties were also a problem. Six on the game seems a little high to me. Although, I realize that the last one on Boyle was sort of necessary to prevent the empty net goal at the end of the game. But the rest of the team needs to play a little smarter than that, I think.

Overall, I still liked what I saw. It's a huge improvement over how they were playing before the All-Star break. It sucks that you can't win them all, but at least you can look back and know you've at least tried your best to get there. So that's something.

Still plenty of season left, tho. I'm not one to give up easily - I'm kind of stubborn that way - so I'm still feeling pretty positive about this team making playoffs. If other people want to get down on this team, they can do it on their own time since I won't put up with that kind of crazy talk. It's not over until it's mathematically over.

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