A fast start leads to future success

In 2016-17, the Tampa Bay Lightning missed the playoffs by one point, the only blip on an otherwise magnificent five-year run for the organization.
That Lightning team finished the season as the hottest team in the NHL. Over the final 30 games, the Lightning went 20-6-4 and picked up a league-best 44 points. But the furious close to the schedule still wasn't enough to overcome a lackluster start to the season, and the Bolts missed out on the postseason - coming up short by a single point -- for the first time since the 2012-13 season.

Their opponent in Saturday's season opener at AMALIE Arena experienced a similar cautionary tale. The Florida Panthers were 21-7-2 and led the NHL for points (44) over the final 30 games of 2017-18. A team that was left for dead in January suddenly was pushing for a spot in the postseason. But like the Lightning a year earlier, the Panthers came up a point short, and the remaining playoff qualifiers breathed a sigh of relief to not have to play a team that seemed darn-near unbeatable as the season came to a close.
"Florida will be the first team to tell you and Tampa being the year before, when you fall behind, you can have a remarkable finish for 30 games and still not make it because you're always chasing," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. "The way to not do that is to get off to a good start, and it'll help you out."

After their surprise absence from the 2017 playoffs, the Lightning made a concerted effort to start the following season with a flourish. It was a common theme throughout training camp. Practices were fast paced and intense. There was a noticeable focus to how the players and coaching staff went about their business in September so that when October rolled around, they'd be ready to hit the ground running.
The end result was the best opening month in franchise history. Tampa Bay went 10-2-1 in October, tied with St. Louis for the top record in the NHL. When the calendar flipped to November, the Lightning had already established a five-point lead on the next-best team in the Eastern Conference and a six-point lead over second place Ottawa in the Atlantic Division.
That start helped sustain the Bolts throughout the remainder of the schedule. The Lightning finished 2017-18 with a 54-23-5 record, the 54 wins and 113 points both franchise records. Tampa Bay won the Atlantic Division, the third time in team history it captured a division title, and earned the top seed as the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference for just the second time ever.
"I know that you don't win a Stanley Cup in October, but you sure give yourself a much better chance to make the playoffs if you get off to a good start," Cooper said.
A similar good start would be beneficial this season for the Lightning too, and the memory of how that early lead helped sustain them when they hit a lull after the All-Star break has the team focused again on getting off on the right foot.
"I think it's something we've talked about and it's one of those things that's a point of emphasis in training camp because of the way we went about things this year and the previous year," Tampa Bay defenseman Braydon Coburn said. "When we're stepping on the ice tomorrow it's been kind of three weeks culminating to that point to get ready for the start of the season."
Of course, if things go awry early on, all is not lost. Last season, for example, the Lightning split their first two games in a home-and-home back-to-back with the Panthers and didn't necessarily resemble a Stanley Cup finalist team many pundits had predicted during the preseason.
"Even though it was a split 1-1, you could make an argument they could have taken both," Cooper said. "After that, I think it was a little bit of a wake-up call for our group, and the guys really took off."

That second game in particular in Sunrise exposed Tampa Bay and showed them how far they had to go to become a good team, especially on the defensive side. Florida torched the Bolts for eight goals over the first two games and had plenty more chances to score and showed them there was plenty of work to do to become the team they knew they could be.
"Early on, the team's going to have room to grow," Coburn said. "We're going to have to figure things out and iron different things out that didn't come up in camp. Every year, when you inject new people into the dressing room, there's going to be a little bit of a learning adjustment. I think as veteran guys and as a team, it's going to be a point of emphasis to try to make sure that we get everybody on the same page so we can start winning games as fast as possible."
With the way this season's schedule shapes up, the Lightning will have plenty of time to figure out what they need to work on following the season opener. They'll have four days of practice and rest before playing game No. 2 Thursday versus Vancouver, an unusually long gap between games for a beginning of the season.
"You kind of just take what the schedule gives you and you make the most of it," Coburn said. "We're going to go through times during the year where the schedule's going to be compact and games are right on us and this gives us a little bit of a chance to play our game and then reflect and iron out some of the details about how we thought that game went."