Lightning not satisfied with split to open series

TAMPA — Experience in the Stanley Cup Playoffs is invaluable. It teaches a player and a team lessons on how to be resilient, how to understand situations and how to properly analyze where you are in the present and what you need to do to get to where you want to go.

For the Tampa Bay Lightning, their experience matters now, because it is allowing them the ability to see the truth two games into the Eastern Conference Final. Without it, the Lightning might be naïve enough to believe splitting those first two games on the road against the Pittsburgh Penguins is good enough.

It’s not good enough because they weren’t good enough. Getting a win in Game 1 was nice, if also opportunistic. So was having the chance to win Game 2 in overtime. But they didn’t win.

“We’re going to have to play better to win this series, there’s no doubt,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said Tuesday. “We haven’t put our best foot forward.”

The Lightning have another chance to do that in Game 3 at Amalie Arena on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVA Sports).

So far, what they’ve done is ride some scintillating goaltending from Andrei Vasilevskiy (.940 save percentage), the occasional gaffe by the Penguins (Olli Maatta letting Alex Killorn behind him in Game 1, Brian Dumoulin’s offensive zone turnover that led to Jonathan Drouin’s goal in Game 1), and some questionable goaltending by Pittsburgh rookie Matt Murray (Drouin’s game-tying goal in Game 2) to get to 1-1 in the best-of-7 series.

“I don’t think we can honestly say it was our A-game the entire time,” center Tyler Johnson said.

It wasn’t, at least not if you’re judging by what the Lightning did against the Detroit Red Wings and New York Islanders in the first two rounds, when they won each series in five …

continue reading in source lightning.nhl.com