Lightning flip the switch - and the script - in Game 1
Even Lightning coach Jon Cooper says the Toronto Maple Leafs could win this series, but not if they continue to make things as easy for Tampa as they did in the first game
It was moments after his team had toyed with its opponent in the first game of the post-season and Ross Colton of the Tampa Bay Lightning was talking about flipping switches. He could have been talking about flipping scripts, too. “For a while there, we weren’t playing the way we wanted to play,” Colton said. “We kept saying that we were going to flip a switch and at some point we had to stop talking about it and start doing it.”
All you kids out (and aspiring coaches) out there, please ignore what Ross Colton just said. In most cases, that is not a recipe for winning hockey, especially for a team that has worked so hard to establish such a high standard. But this is the Lightning we’re talking about and when you’ve accomplished what they have over the past three seasons (four if you include the fact they won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19), you’ve earned the right to thumb your nose at conventional thinking. And, hoo boy, did the Lightning do that in Game 1 of their series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, who were more than willing accomplices in all of it. They scored early, they scored often, they scored at the end of periods, they chased Ilya Samsonov out of the net and they scored on the power play.
Despite the lopsided victory against a team where it looked as though the moment was too big for them, again, the Maple Leafs could still win this series. We know this for a couple of reasons. First, Lightning coach Jon Cooper, who has seen everything in the playoffs, told us. “The Leafs might win this series, they might,” were Cooper’s exact words.
The other reason is that the Lightning might lose a battle of attrition. They played the final 24 minutes and 20 seconds of the game with just four defencemen and two of them were Ian Cole and Darren Raddysh. That’s because all-world Victor Hedman did not come out for the second period and Erik Cernak was elbowed in the head by Michael Bunting, who deservedly received a major penalty and will probably be deservedly suspended for his lack of discipline. “I’ll give you the company line that the league will handle it,” Cooper said of Bunting’s headshot, “but for me, it checked a bunch of boxes.”
And that’s precisely where the flipping of the script comes in. If we’re being honest with ourselves, if we had to guess prior to the series which team would drag this thing into the muck, almost all of us would have picked the Lightning to do that, because they’re big, heavy, physical and more than a little dirty. But the Lightning didn’t have to do that because their opponent did that for them. Cooper didn’t have to out-coach Sheldon Keefe because Keefe took care of that on his own. The Lightning have the reputation of being bullies, but it was Leafs defenceman Luke Schenn, who should know better since he played for the Lightning, who was running around trying to fight guys and it was Bunting who was elbowing Lightning defencemen in the head. The Lightning are pretty comfortable playing in the alley, but they didn’t even have a chance to take the game there before the Leafs did, which was a tactical error of biblical proportions.
“Some uncharacteristic goals against there around our net,” Keefe said. “It was a strength of ours all season long both in our goaltending and managing rebounds. I don’t think nerves have anything to do with why we don’t defend our net and allowing them to walk to the goal line. I mean, those are all things where we’re as good as anyone in the NHL at defending that area of the ice. That’s disappointing.”
It was astounding, really, how the Lightning were given free rein on zone entries and occupying the front of the net. The Leafs, meanwhile, had to fight for every inch and every puck in the offensive zone. And, as has been the case far too often, the Leafs star players had little to no impact. Until his ejection, Bunting may have been the best player on his line. When that line also includes Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, that’s a pretty serious problem. And don’t get us started on the defence pairing of Justin Holl and Mark Giordano. “I played like shit,” Samsonov said after the game.
As Cooper said, the Leafs could still win this series. After all, the Lighting lost 5-0 in Game 1 last year and went on to beat the Leafs in seven. If the Lightning have to replace Hedman and Cernak with the likes of Haydn Fleury and Zach Bogosian, that would be problematic. But two nights into the playoff marathon, we were all once again taught a lesson here by an organization that has become the NHL’s gold standard. You underestimate the Lightning at your own peril.