No panic but plenty of urgency for Lightning

There's no panic in the Tampa Bay Lightning locker room after dropping three of their last four games, all to teams ahead of them in the Central Division standings.
But there is an urgency to rediscover the style of play that carried them through the 2020 Playoffs to the Stanley Cup, especially in this shortened 56-game regular season.

Tampa Bay fell further back in the Central standings following a 4-0 loss at Carolina Saturday. The upstart Hurricanes and Florida Panthers are two of the hottest teams in the NHL to begin the season and have created a slight bit of separation between themselves and the Lightning, who rank third in the Central based on points percentage (.700) and fourth on points behind Chicago.
The top four teams in each division qualify for the postseason.
The Lightning have been one of the best teams in the NHL too through 15 games. They rank tied for fifth in the overall NHL standings on points percentage. But they've gone a combined 1-3-1 so far against the Panthers and Hurricanes - the two teams above them in the standings - this season.

"The beauty of what we did in the bubble is that we know what our game looks like when we're at our best," Lightning forward Blake Coleman said. "I think we know exactly the way we need to play, the simplicity to our game, our scoring comes from playing good defense and wearing teams down. It's hard to play that playoff style of hockey for 56, 82, however many games it is. it's difficult to play that in-your-face, hard hockey every night. But at the same time, we have the map of what it needs to look like, and we need to get back to that sooner rather than later here because there's just not enough runway here to let this style of play slide. There's no panic in our group. We've got a veteran group, a lot of guys who have been around for a long time and understand the ups and downs and momentum in this league and I expect that we'll bounce back here pretty soon."
The Lightning were shut out by the Hurricanes Saturday, the second time in two meetings this season the Canes have blanked the Bolts. Tampa Bay has gone over seven periods and 155:53 of game time since last scoring on the Hurricanes, that coming from Brayden Point January 5, 2020 in a 3-1 win in Raleigh.
"I think it wasn't a lack of effort," Coleman said of Saturday night's defeat. "I think we were working hard, it's just we've got to work a little bit smarter as a group. There's not a whole lot of time here. We know what's at stake and we know what our game's like when we're playing our best and we haven't been there in the last little stretch here."
The Lightning will get three more chances in the next five days against the Hurricanes with a rematch at PNC Arena Monday followed by a back-to-back set Wednesday and Thursday at AMALIE Arena.
During a practice session Sunday in Raleigh, the Lightning worked on a few areas where they felt they could be better to crack through the Canes' seemingly impenetrable wall. For starters, they lost their patience once Carolina drew first blood on a fluky goal and chased the game for the remainder.
"We got away from staying with it, having that patient type of mentality and then we started turning pucks over, we started chasing, we wanted to get that goal back immediately and in reality it ended up in the back of our net a couple more times," Lightning assistant coach Derek Lalonde said. "I think it has a little bit more to do with just a discipline, on playing the right way for 60 minutes. They're a very good team, and they're not going to give you much. You need to win that game 1-0. Once we got down 1-0, you need to win it 2-1, and once we got down 2-0, we need to win it 3-2. I know that sounds pretty simple and simple math, but that's the reality and the way our division is playing out especially with some of these top teams."
The Lightning didn't do enough to get inside of Carolina in Saturday's loss. Most of their 24 shots came from the perimeter, and they weren't effective getting into the high-danger areas to really test Canes netminder Alex Nedeljkovic, who recorded his first career shutout Saturday in just his 10th career NHL game.
"For me, personally, I've just got to make sure I'm doing a better job getting into the blue paint, getting pucks there, getting my body there, whatever it is," Coleman said. "You've got to score some ugly ones against this team. I think you've just got to stick to the program."

Lastly, they can't pass up good scoring opportunities when they have them. The Lightning had a number of sequences Saturday where they had a good look at net but passed out of the chance. Mostly it led to the chance being eliminated altogether. Rarely did it lead to a better scoring chance.
"I know there was one that sticks out in my head that I passed up yesterday that nine times out of 10 I'm shooting that puck," Coleman said. "So things like that where you're just, when you're playing your game and you're feeling good, that's a no-brainer shot. Things like that, we've just got to get back to."
"You have to shoot the puck, and what you find is it breaks teams down," Lalonde added. "We call it all the time, shot scramble game. You'll hear from the bench, 'We've got to get to that shot scramble game.' We need to get the puck to the net and then you need to hopefully break them down from there. For the most part over the last couple years, we've had good buy in from that, but it's always a hard reminder when you play a really good team that's committed to playing the right way all the time."
The Lightning know what they need to do to produce a positive result against Carolina. And to get back in the win ledger after a rough couple of outings against the top teams in their division. They've also been through difficult stretches previously - like last season when they were 17-13-4 through the first 34 games before catching fire and lifting the Stanley Cup by year's end - to know they can pull themselves out before they go into a complete tailspin.
The Lightning aren't panicking. But there's urgency to get back to their style of play, a style that's proven to be successful.
"I think it's part of a process, it's part of little growing pains, but we knew we'd go through some of these stretches," Lalonde said. "We're going to go through more coming up. We just have to mature as a team when we hit those stretches to handle them a little better."