NHL

Are better days ahead for Lightning?

Tampa Bay hopes early-season coaching change pays off

You can trace the productivity of a team’s offense to its power play. Given the Lightning’s ample talent offensively, they should not be ranked No. 21 on the power play. Tampa Bay is scoring on only 16 percent of its power play opportunities and that isn’t going to get the Lightning on a winning track.

Providing the players with structure will help address this problem and Tocchet must keep

experimenting until he hits on the right players for the right positions on the power play. An improved power play will cure a lot of what ails Tampa Bay offensively.

Vinny Lecavalier and Marty St. Louis are also keys to the offense. They are so familiar with each other and have been so effective over the years. They have a comfort level playing together and that’s what any team wants for its best athletes. They are elite athletes and they will put up big numbers. Tocchet is experimenting with two-player groups on forward lines and rotating in a third player. That affords Stamkos a chance to play some at wing with Lecavalier and St. Louis. That’s a key for him and it also could get the veterans untracked.

The Lightning need defensemen who can move pucks out of their own end, especially since blue liner Dan Boyle, who was an offensive catalyst, was dealt away last summer and Matt Carle, one of those obtained for Boyle, was traded to the Flyers in early November. Both deals seem an indication of fiscal belt tightening on the part of Tampa Bay.

The Lightning don’t have a very gifted blue line and that hurts since the blue line is the lifeline to get pucks to talented offensive stars like Lecavalier and St. Louis. The rear guards is one area that needs to be improved and Lawton needs to be shopping for blue-line help but defensemen who can move the puck are a much needed commodity by more than a few NHL teams. So for Lawton it’s like shopping for Cabbage Patch dolls when they were the rage. It’s one thing to know what you need and another thing to find it.

Tampa Bay is getting solid goaltending from Mike Smith and Olaf Kolzig and that needs to continue to be the case if the Lightning, who tied the Kings for least points (71) in the NHL last season, are to improve and make a run at the playoffs.

The first month and a half on the schedule has been a stretch to forget. Now the question is whether led by Tocchet the Lightning can make this season one to remember for more than just the cameo return to coaching by Melrose.

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