TAMPA -- In the middle of a seven-game losing streak, their longest of the season, the Tampa Bay Lightning are  fighting the urge to hang their heads, but as they look forward now, they come face-to-face with the formidable Boston Bruins.

Boston, the defending Stanley Cup champion, comes calling Tuesday night for the first time this season as the Bruins face the Lightning at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

For Tampa Bay, beset with key injuries and shaky goaltending, the timing couldn't be worse. The defensive corps, particularly, has been decimated. Defensive stalwart Mattias Ohlund has not appeared in a game yet this season after surgery to both knees, Victor Hedman will miss his 10th consecutive game with a concussion, Marc-Andre Bergeron will sit out with a bad back and penalty-kill and faceoff specialist Adam Hall is still sidelined with an upper-body injury.

Other players expected to miss action include Dana Tyrell and Ryan Shannon, both with upper-body injuries, and JT Wyman with a lower-body injury.

Lightning coach Guy Boucher has worked at adjusting his players' expectations going forwarded.

"Expectations have to match the circumstances," Boucher said. "We have to fight. The shame doesn't come from losing, it comes from not fighting. That's an attitude. You can be disappointed, but you can't let that bring you down.

"It's not about the entire season and it's not about the playoffs and it's not about last year. It's about being able to focus on today, the moment."

Admittedly, the moment just ahead looks scary. The Bruins are one point out of tying for the Eastern Conference lead and are 13-5-0 on the road.

"It's only about Boston now, and they've been killing teams; not just winning, but destroying teams," Boucher said. "We are aware that this is the powerhouse team in the League; the team that destroys everybody. It's a difficult mountain that we face."

If the Lightning are to have any chance Tuesday night, they'll need a big game from NHL goals leader Steven Stamkos. Stamkos collected a point on an assist Sunday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, but was held without a shot on goal for only the second time this season.

"Stamkos didn't have his best game against Pittsburgh," Boucher said. "Why? Because we were pushing in the previous game and I had on the ice for 20:57 and he had no more juice."

Stamkos has had more than 20 minutes of ice time for nine consecutive games and skated for just under 27 minutes Jan. 10 against Vancouver.

"Do I want to blame him for not playing his best game?" Boucher said. "No, because he's fighting so hard. He's giving everything he's got; the battle level, the fight level, the leadership."

"You're not going to feel your best every game of the year," Stamkos said. "If you think you are, you're leading yourself down the wrong path. I have been playing a lot, but there is no way I'll ever tell the coach I'm playing too much. I'll play as much as I can and try to contribute every shift."

This is the first time that Boston has returned to Tampa since the seventh game of the Eastern Conference Finals last season when the Bruins edged the Lightning 1-0 to advance to the Stanley Cup Final.

"We've been through a lot since then," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "This team surprised a lot of people last year."

Meanwhile, in the middle of a difficult year, Boucher is taking the opportunity to assess his team in new ways.

"It's one of those years," Boucher said. "But then you get to see who is what. Which guy fights, which guy folds and which guy flies away.

"Instead of hiding, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, no, it's what can we manage. It's not about crying over circumstances. So we take the elephant and eat it one bite at a time."

And that's a pretty daunting elephant they're facing Tuesday night.

Here's how the lineups could look tonight when the Tampa Bay Lightning host the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins at the Tampa Bay Times Forum:

BRUINS
Milan Lucic - David Krejci - Nathan Horton
Benoit Pouliot - Patrice Bergeron - Tyler Seguin
Jordan Caron - Chris Kelly - Zach Hamill
Daniel Paille - Gregory Campbell - Shawn Thornton

Zdeno Chara - Johnny Boychuk
Dennis Seidenberg - Joe Corvo
Andrew Ference - Adam McQuaid

Tuukka Rask
Tim Thomas

LIGHTNING
Tom Pyatt - Vincent Lecavalier - Ryan Malone
Martin St. Louis - Steven Stamkos - Steve Downie
Dominic Moore - Nate Thompson - Teddy Purcell
Pierre-Cedric Labrie - Trevor Smith - Brett Connolly

Eric Brewer - Pavel Kubina
Brett Clark - Matt Gilroy
Bruno Gervais - Brendan Mikkelson

Mathieu Garon
Dwayne Roloson

Here are the projected lineups for this afternoon's game between Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay:

PITTSBURGH PENGUINS
 
Chris Kunitz  -  Evgeni Malkin  -   James Neal
Pascal Dupuis  -  Dustin Jeffrey  -  Tyler Kennedy
Matt Cooke  -  Richard Park  -  Steve Sullivan
Eric Tangradi  -  Craig Adams  -  Arron Asham
 
Paul Martin  -  Zbynek Michalek
Brooks Orpik  -  Deryk Engelland
Matt Niskanen  -  Ben Lovejoy
 
Marc-Andre Fleury
Brent Johnson
 
TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING
 
Ryan Malone  -  Vincent Lecavalier  -  Brett Connolly
Martin St. Louis  -  Steven Stamkos  -  Steve Downie
Tom Pyatt  -  Dominic Moore  -  Teddy Purcell
Dana Tyrell  -  Nate Thompson  -  Pierre-Cedric Labrie
 
Eric Brewer  -  Pavel Kubina
Marc-Andre Bergeron  -  Matt Gilroy
Brett Clark  -  Brendan Mikkelson
 
Mathieu Garon
Dwayne Roloson

TAMPA -- Two teams vying to avoid last place in the Southeast Division meet Thursday when the Carolina Hurricanes visit the Tampa Bay Times Forum to face the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The clubs are just three points apart in the standings, with the advantage going to Tampa Bay, and Lightning coach Guy Boucher expects a close battle.

“They are a hard-working team; they grind it out,” Boucher said. “We’re not a high-end team and they’re not a high-end team. We’re two teams that are fighting to get whatever we can, and that makes for tight games. I expect that to be the story tonight.”

A tight game often turns on the play of special teams and in that aspect, this matchup is a tale of two power plays. The Lightning are mired in a 2-for-33 power play slump and in their last game, Tuesday night against Vancouver, struggled to even get across the Canucks’ blueline with the man advantage.

“It’s not like we don’t have a really good group of players on the power play,” Marc-Andre Bergeron said. “We’ve got real skilled guys out there.”

The problem, then?

“If I knew, I don’t think I’d tell,” Bergeron said. “I’d keep it to myself and share it with the guys. One thing for sure, you can’t win in this League without a good power play.”

True enough, and Tampa Bay has gone 1-3-1 in its last five games; their last win came against the Hurricanes on New Year’s Eve.

For Guy Boucher, the problem hasn’t been the skill of the players he sends out with the extra man, but more a matter of finding the right man to run the power play.

“Time on the power play is the last thing you want to give a guy that doesn’t have confidence,” Boucher said. “I’ve seen this my entire life as a coach and as a player. Power plays are the most stressful things for any defenseman because he’s the quarterback back there. Anything that goes wrong, he feels that he’s the one responsible for it. You need a lot of poise and a lot of confidence. Top power play guys have cockiness about themselves; you need that. There’s a swagger and an extreme confidence that goes with it. When you give that spot to the wrong guy at the wrong time, it’s a catastrophe and you can actually ruin a player’s season like that.”

Boucher’s search for the power play quarterback has led him down some blind alleys.

“I saw it happen with Matt Gilroy,” Boucher said. “I knew it was a mistake but I still made it – he had been playing well and I put him on the power play and his game went down.”

Carolina, meanwhile, seems to have found the secret. In its last six games, the power play is clicking along at a better than 40 percent success rate (7 of 17).

“It goes to execution and poise,” Hurricanes coach Kirk Muller said. “The guys are committed to simplifying it and getting shots when they are available. We’ve gotten traffic in front of the net. It’s just a matter of composure and staying with the plan.”
One break for Tampa Bay is that Jeff Skinner will not play. Although he has been cleared for contact, Skinner will sit out and will miss his 15th game with a concussion.

HURRICANES

Jiri Tlusty - Eric Staal - Tuomo Ruutu
Andreas Nodl - Brandon Sutter - Patrick Dwyer
Alexei Ponikarovsky - Jussi Jokinnen - Jerome Samson
Brett Sutter - Tim Brent - Anthony Stewart

Tim Gleason - Jamie McBain
Jay Harrison - Justin Faulk
Jaroslav Spacek - Bryan Allen

Cam Ward
Justin Peters

LIGHTNING

Tom Pyatt - Vincent Lecavalier - Steve Downie
Martin St. Louis - Steven Stamkos - Brett Connolly
Ryan Malone - Dominic Moore - Teddy Purcell
Dana Tyrell - Nate Thompson  
Eric Brewer - Pavel Kubina

Marc-Andre Bergeron - Matt Gilroy
Brett Clark - Bruno Gervais
Brendan Mikkelson

Mathieu Garon
Dwayne Roloson

TAMPA -- All you need to know about the first half of the Tampa Bay Lightning's season can be found in two statistics:

Tuesday night at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, the Lightning will face the Vancouver Canucks:
a) seeking to break a three-game losing streak
b) seeking their fifth straight win at home

That sums it up.

Tampa Bay has been in search of stability all season, but the only consistency it has found is in its production on home ice. The Lightning are 11-5-0 at home and 6-15-3 on the road. Even more telling, their power play has connected at 21.8 percent at home and only 8.4 percent (worst in the NHL) on the road.

"Our power play on the road has been awful," Lightning coach Guy Boucher said. "I guess we like our fans at home and the reaction of the fans when we score on the power play."

But redemption could be just around the corner, as the Lightning begin a stretch where nine of their next 12 games will be at home.

"The next 12 games will show what will happen to us," Boucher said. "They will be very crucial. We've played great at home. We've beaten good teams here. Our game needs to be what it is at home and not what it has been on the road. We don't need to re-invent our game."

Although mired in 13th place in the Eastern Conference, nine points out of the final playoff spot at the mid-point of the season, Boucher hasn't bothered to track the standings.

"I've coached for 14 years now and never looked at the standings," Boucher said. "The standings today mean nothing. Today we're meeting Vancouver. Looking at how far other teams might be ahead is more discouraging than it is encouraging. Today it's not about what will happen in a month, it's about what will happen tonight in the first five minutes of the game. If we're not ready in those first five minutes, the rest of the standings really don't matter."

The Canucks (26-14-3) took the morning off after losing 2-1 Monday night against the Florida Panthers. Vancouver has not lost two games in a row since Nov. 4.

Here's how the lineups project:

CANUCKS
Alexandre Burrows - Henrik Sedin - Daniel Sedin
Mason Raymond - Ryan Kesler - Chris Higgins
Cody Hodgson - Maxim Lapierre - Jannik Hansen
Mike Duco - Manny Malhotra - Dale Weise

Dan Hamhuis - Kevin Bieksa
Alexander Edler - Alexander Sulzer
Keith Ballard - Andrew Alberts

Cory Schneider
Roberto Luongo

LIGHTNING
Ryan Malone - Vincent Lecavalier - Brett Connolly
Martin St. Louis - Steven Stamkos - Steve Downie
Tom Pyatt - Dominic Moore - Teddy Purcell
Pierre-Cedric Labrie - Nate Thompson - Dana Tyrell

Eric Brewer - Pavel Kubina
Marc-Andre Bergeron - Matt Gilroy
Brett Clark - Brendan Mikkelson

Dwayne Roloson
Mathieu Garon

TAMPA -- Lightning coach Guy Boucher sounded as if he were planning a visit to a local hospital rather than preparing to take on the Montreal Canadiens Thursday night at the St. Pete Times Forum.

"Victor Hedman is not playing tonight, that's for sure," Boucher said. "He's still day-to-day, but today, it's not looking good. Nate Thompson? Not in tonight. He's a huge part of our team but his recovery isn't going as fast as I would hope."

Hedman is sidelined with an upper-body injury incurred when he hit the boards in the first period against the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night, and Thompson has already missed three games with a lower-body injury.

But the list doesn't stop there; in fact, Boucher bemoaned that he hasn't had all the pieces of his team even once this year.

"We've had injuries since the beginning," Boucher said. "(Mattias) Ohlund not being there from the start has made us adjust many times in many different ways. We take it game-by-game and we can't say we really play one particular way. It really depends who we have in the lineup."

It isn't all glum, however, as Tampa Bay, winners of three of their last five, has won their last two home games by scoring five goals in each and Steven Stamkos has 6 goals and 3 assists over his past six games, pulling him into a tie with Marian Gaborik of the New York Rangers for the NHL lead in goals.

Canadiens coach Randy Cunneyworth had some better medical details to report.

"We've got everybody available," Cunneyworth said. "Twenty-two guys ready to go."

Cunneyworth, just off his first win as the interim coach on Dec. 27 at Ottawa, was optimistic about the team's prospects going forward.

"We're trying to build something, and we did some good work last game in Ottawa," Cunneyworth said. "There is room for improvement and this game against Tampa Bay is a chance to make that improvement. We want to continue to get better, and if we do that, I think the points will fall into place."

Here are how the lineups could look tonight when the Tampa Bay Lightning host the Montreal Canadiens at the St. Pete Times Forum:

CANADIENS
Travis Moen - Tomas Plekanec - Andrei Kostitsyn
Max Pacioretty - Lars Eller - Erik Cole
Michael Cammalleri - David Desharnais - Louis Leblanc
Mike Blunden - Petteri Nokelainen - Mathieu Darche

Josh Gorges - P.K. Subban
Hal Gill - Raphael Diaz
Tomas Kaberle - Alexei Emelin

Carey Price
Alex Auld

LIGHTNING
Martin St. Louis - Vincent Lecavalier - Ryan Malone
Steve Downie - Steven Stamkos - Teddy Purcell
Tom Pyatt - Dominic Moore - JT Wyman
Adam Hall - Dana Tyrell - Blair Jones

Eric Brewer - Pavel Kubina
Brett Clark - Matt Gilroy
Marc-Andre Bergeron - Bruno Gervais

Mathieu Garon
Dwayne Roloson

TAMPA -- On Tuesday night, the Philadelphia Flyers make their first visit to the St. Pete Times Forum since Nov. 9. Early in that contest, the Flyers launched into their version of the "hesitation waltz," virtually freezing the puck and daring the Tampa Bay Lightning to break a 1-3-1 defensive formation and attack.

The tactic set loose a firestorm of comments and reactions from notables throughout the hockey world.

But despite the notoriety, don't rule out a repeat performance by the Flyers tonight. In fact, coach Peter Laviolette doesn't see what all the fuss was about.

"I don't think it was a controversy," Laviolette said, "it was a tactic. We normally don't share our game plans with the papers, so we'll just keep our plans for tonight to ourselves."

At the time the two teams met, both Tampa Bay and Philadelphia were enjoying success on the ice; the Lightning had won six of their last eight games and the Flyers had collected points in four consecutive games.

Since that meeting, only Philadelphia has been able to maintain its momentum, going 7-2-1 over its last 10 games while battling the New York Rangers for the top spot in the Atlantic Division. It's been a different story for the Lightning, who have managed to win only six of 19 contests since that first meeting, including a 5-2 drubbing by the Flyers in Philadelphia on Dec. 10, during the course of which the Flyers attacked the Lightning aggressively.

"But things are different in their building," Laviolette said.

Different or not, how the Flyers attack their defense will be of little concern to the Lightning, who are hoping that the three game homestand which opens Tuesday night will give them some traction to advance in the standings.

"It won't matter to us at all, not really," Lightning captain Vincent Lecavalier said. "We just play our system. If we start moving around that's when there will be holes for them to take advantage of."

FLYERS
Scott Hartnell - Claude Giroux - Jaromir Jagr
Wayne Simmonds - Maxime Talbot - Danny Briere
Matt Read - Blair Betts - Jakub Voracek
Jody Shelley - Zac Rinaldo - Harry Zolnierczyk

Braydon Coburn - Andreas Lilja
Matt Carle - Andrej Meszaros
Kimmo Timonen - Marc-Andre Bourdon

Ilya Bryzgalov
Sergei Bobrovsky

LIGHTNING
Martin St. Louis - Vincent Lecavalier - Ryan Malone
Steve Downie - Steven Stamkos - Teddy Purcell
Tom Pyatt - Dominic Moore - James Wyman
Adam Hall - Dana Tyrell - Blair Jones

Eric Brewer - Victor Hedman
Marc-Andre Bergeron - Matt Gilroy
Brett Clark - Pavel Kubina

Mathieu Garon
Dwayne Roloson

TAMPA, Fla. -- The Calgary Flames and the Tampa Bay Lightning, who meet tonight here at the St. Pete Times Forum, are like two ships passing in the night.

The Lightning (12-16-2) will conclude a two-game homestand tonight, hoping to grab a win before leaving for a three-game road trip. Tampa Bay has been reeling recently, having lost 11 of their last 15.

The Flames (14-14-2), meanwhile, are getting hot. After winning just eight of their first 21 games, they're 6-2-1 in their last nine games.

The Flames have scored 14 goals over the last four games and positive signs abound.

"We're showing confidence," said Calgary coach Brent Sutter. "We've worked hard and we don't want to fall back now."

Tampa Bay, by contrast, has been beset with troubles on all sides.

"Adversity, adversity, adversity," Lightning coach Guy Boucher said when asked to describe the season so far. "That's what it's been since training camp."

Boucher pointed to injuries, power-play production and secondary scoring as causes for the team's slide.

"Mattias Ohlund isn't skating and he isn't even close to coming back," Boucher said of the mainstay defenseman who is yet to play a game following offseason surgery on both knees. "It's a question of pain tolerance and mobility. His knees are worn down."

The power play, which is 24th in the League at 15.0 percent, currently is mired in a 2-for-21 slump. Last season at this point, the success rate stood at 24 percent.

Almost half of the team's goals this season have come from three players -- Steven Stamkos (18), Vincent Lecavalier (11) and Martin St. Louis (9). With St. Louis sidelined indefinitely with facial and nasal fractures, Boucher has called on other players to fill the gap; to date, they have not.

Teddy Purcell doesn't have a point in five games and has no goals and only 3 assists in his last 16; Ryan Shannon, brought in as a free agent this season to add scoring, has 1 goal in the last nine games; Dana Tyrell hasn't scored a goal in 10 games.

"We need the second and third lines to score to give us a bit of offense," Tyrell said. "We know we're capable of doing it; it'll come, we just can't get down on ourselves."

"Obviously, we're not getting the results we want," Boucher said. "There were high expectations even though last year we were viewed as a 'Cinderella' team. But we're close. It's a fine line and any game could be the turnaround game for us."

TAMPA, Fla. -- Here are the lineups the Lightning and Flames likely will put on the ice when the teams meet tonight at St. Pete Times Forum.

FLAMES
Curtis Glencross - Olli Jokinen - Jarome Iginla
Alex Tanguay - Brendan Morrison - Rene Bourque
Blake Comeau - Mikael Backlund - Lee Stempniak
Tom Kostopoulos - Matt Stajan - Tim Jackman

Scott Hannan - Derek Smith
Jay Bouwmeester - Chris Butler
T.J. Brodie - Brett Carson
Miikka Kiprusoff will start in goal, with Leland Irving the backup.

LIGHTNING
Tom Pyatt - Vincent Lecavalier - Steve Downie
Ryan Malone - Steven Stamkos - Teddy Purcell
Blair Jones - Dominic Moore - Ryan Shannon
Dana Tyrell - Nate Thompson - Adam Hall

Victor Hedman - Eric Brewer
Brett Clark - Pavel Kubina
Marc-Andre Bergeron - Matt Gilroy

Mathieu Garon will start in goal, with Dwayne Roloson backing him up.

For more on tonight's game, check out the preview here.