The lightning had just lost 2-1 in their first March home game against the 1st place team league wide, the Boston Bruins.
Ten minutes after the game concluded, I am sitting here still contemplating the overall execution of the game.
Was is slow? Was it lively? Was it rough?
Every period truly had a personality of its own, so it’s important that each receives an individual analysis.
First, the first period.
The first period can be defined by its excessive diving.
Though you may think of embellishment, the kind of diving I am referring to is the one with desperation written all over it.
Five minutes into the game, Cirelli was skating down the offensive zone into what almost was a breakaway. To save the play, Cirelli dropped to his hands and knees, though seemingly missing the goal completely.
Occurrences like that were sprinkled all over the place, done as a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing created out of drive to get the puck in the net, or the other way around.
Period two gave the audience one thing that was lacking in the first: fighting.
While no legitimate fight broke out, there were a handful of sprawls occurring by the guys. In one corner you have Pat Maroon having it out with someone and in the other you have Pat Maroon having it out with someone as well…big surprise.
Period two also had the only Lightning goal of the game, scored by big time rookie Mitchell Stephens, whose brought many assets to the team this year and who has great potential for upcoming years.
Now for the third period.
It was honestly a hard time analyzing the third period due to the lack of action occurring within a ball of dense action.
The game had really started to pick up; it felt as though there was a shot on goal every other time I would blink, but at the same time, it did not have enough energy.
It felt as if the team was giving the most effort that they could before hitting maximum effort, as if they were reaching that 100% without fully hitting it.
It is truly hard to pinpoint anything that went wrong because simply nothing major went wrong.
The Bruins are an amazing team who had beat us rightfully so.
Though the Lightning was strong, I can confidently say that they did not put in their full effort tonight, as is reflected by the final score. But it is not the end of the team. They still have a month to bring them out of the mini drought (that I very well believe is temporary) and into an anticipated strong streak during the Stanley cup playoffs!
*No Copyright infringement intended
Catchin' up with Hockey Talks 