Game 26: Buffalo at Tampa Bay

The Tampa Bay Lightning lost their seventh game in a row to Buffalo by 4-3.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out why they didn't win this game, and it's hard to put your finger on anything in particular. Shots weren't bad, they were actually scoring, penalties didn't really hurt them, face offs were outstanding, and it was a hard hitting game. Nothing too obvious stands out at first.

The power play wasn't great, but they were at least getting shots on net with that. And while it certainly would've helped to have scored on the power play, there was something missing from the even the even strength play. And I think that was puck possession.

Things were a little scrambly for Tampa Bay off and on throughout the night. It was particularly bad after Buffalo's fourth goal. Passing was alright, but guys were trying to force the play and ended up turning the puck over doing that. Sometimes, it'd be nice to have a time of possession stat like football does, but that'd be hard to keep track of during a free-flowing game like hockey.

Smith wasn't at his best, but he was still pretty good. And, really, a team shouldn't completely rely upon their goaltender for everything anyways. Even with Smith being merely pretty good instead of fantastic, they should still be able to win.

Prospal's goal was amazing, tho. It was almost unbelievable, in fact. He wouldn't have been able to get that in if he'd thought it out and then tried doing it. That backhand shot that was done completely with peripheral vision that just happened to bank off the back of Miller and into the net was just shear craziness. Talk about luck.

And while I did notice that Lecavalier looked rather cranky tonight, I didn't expect him to get into a fight. That caught me completely off guard. Of course, it doesn't help that there's almost never any build-up to these things with him and he just starts pounding on someone out of the blue. In a way, I wasn't totally surprised because the team's been having a tough time of it, and I've been half-waiting for it to happen, anyway. I get the impression that most guys off other teams don't want to fight Lecavalier, tho. I think that he intimidates a lot of them.

St. Louis had a great game, too. He never seems to panic when he's on the ice in any situation, which is unusual for most of this team. He's such a steady guy, and the team needs more of that calm, determined, and no-nonsense sort of presence. I'm not saying that he's the only one that does that on the team, I'm just saying that he's the most consistent about it.

Well, they're getting closer to that ever elusive win. Again, they lost by one goal, but even minor improvements are still improvements. Baby steps can be frustrating, but it's better than stagnating.

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