Burns: 3 Things from getting cut down by the Canucks

The Tampa Bay Lightning were hoping a three-day break between games would be just the tonic they needed to erase the memory of a rough stretch of recent results and come back to the rink refreshed and rejuvenated.
Instead, the Bolts' play against Vancouver was just more of the same.

The Lightning lost 5-1 to the Canucks, the second-to-last place team in the Pacific Division, to drop to 1-5-1 over their last seven games. Included in that stretch are four-goal losses to Columbus and now Vancouver and a three-goal loss at Boston.
"I don't even remember losing games by four goals, ever," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said following another deflating defeat. "Maybe one a year. We're losing them once a week now."
The Lightning need to correct their issues and fast: The defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins come to town Saturday before the Bolts head out on another long road trip, this one through Western Canada.
Thursday's loss was difficult to stomach, but we'll digest as much as we can in today's 3 Things.

1. PUNCH IN THE GUT
During morning skate, the Lightning talked about how important it would be to get off to a good start against Vancouver with the Bolts coming off a three-day break where they practiced one day and had two days completely off.
Sometimes rust can accumulate after going so many days without a game, but that wasn't a problem for Tampa Bay on Thursday. The Bolts' start was one of their best of the season. For the first four minutes of the game, the Lightning kept the puck buried inside the offensive zone and made Canucks goaltender Ryan Miller scramble to keep it out of his net.
The Lightning outshot the Canucks 6-0 in the first few minutes.
The fast start, however, was all for naught as Vancouver scored on its first shot of the game, Jack Skille getting a step on Nikita Kucherov on a drive to the net and using his body to box out Kucherov while beating Ben Bishop with a well-placed shot.
"I thought we came out, we were outstanding, and they come down, one shot, it's in the net," Cooper said. "It seemed that was it. The little bit of adversity hits, which I didn't think was any at all. There's 55 minutes left, and I thought we were playing hard. Guys were doing some good things, and then we just kind of stopped."
The Lightning never recovered from the unexpected punch in the gut.
"They make a good play, but we have to have a better response," Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. "We didn't have the response we needed. We got a lot of shots, but we can't let one goal like that affect us as much as it did."

2. THE DAGGER
The Lightning fell behind 3-0 before Jonathan Drouin finally got them on the board at 11:46 of the second period with his fourth goal of the season to cut the deficit to two.
The goal seemed to spark a bit of life in the Lightning. They seized on the momentum from scoring and kept peppering Miller with good scoring chances throughout the second half of the period.
Right before the end of the second, however, the Bolts had a breakdown defensively, and the Canucks scored with one second to go to effectively snuff any comeback attempt.
Jayson Megna netted his second goal of the night after receiving a pass all alone in close and shooting over Bishop's glove to push the Canucks' lead back to three goals.
"I'm not sure if it was a turnover, a play at the boards, but it seemed like we were all kind of going one way and they were going the other way and maybe focusing on the wrong net," Killorn said.
Down 3-1 going into the third, the Lightning still had a chance to get back in the game.
Down 4-1, especially the way the fourth goal happened, the Bolts so close to getting out of the period but letting one slip in in the final second, was too much to overcome.
"The fourth one was the killer," Cooper said. "We're clearly thinking about the wrong net. You go into the room down 3-1, which I thought we had momentum, we lost it all right there on that goal and we were just completely thinking about the wrong net. We were all going one way, and Vancouver had other ideas. We turn it over, and it's in the back of our net. That is a microcosm of what's been going on lately."

3. BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
After a four-game losing skid at the end of November into December that saw them give up five goals, four goals, five goals and five goals in consecutive games, the Lightning recommitted to playing defense and focusing on their net before worrying about the opponents.
The results of this refocus had been encouraging. The Lightning only allowed two goals combined in a pair of games over the weekend.
Unfortunately, they only scored one themselves, although they were able to grab three of four points from the back-to-back set.
With the defense seemingly righted, the Bolts said they would look to generate more offense against Vancouver. But that just led to another lopsided defeat in which the Bolts surrendered a ton of goals and were still unable to get anything going of their own.
"We're just not playing really the way we want to play," Killorn said. "I think our team, we do a good job focusing on one thing. I know defensively is what we were focusing on the past couple of games, and then tonight it seemed like offense was something we wanted to focus on. We can't seem to put it all together. I think on a couple plays - we've only scored one goal in the past three games - so guys are trying to score. Guys are really working hard to score, but it can't be taking away from our defensive play."
So how do the Lightning get back to playing sound defense while also taking advantage of one of the league's most offensively-skilled rosters?
That's the million-dollar question.
"We know have the skill," Bolts defenseman Victor Hedman said. "We know we can put the puck in the net, so it's just the matter of playing the right way. You score one goal during the weekend and you got three out of four points, so defense is going to win you games and we got to get back to that and I'm pretty confident that we'll find the back of the net."