Following the Lightning's morning skate in Dallas, Jon Cooper was asked how his team would handle the desperation from a Stars team that is fighting tooth and nail for a spot in the postseason.
"Did you ask them the same question about us," Cooper replied. "[These are] two desperate teams in my opinion. You know, of late here, we've played a couple good games, but we've got teams trying to chase us down and we're trying to catch teams, so I don't think the desperation level should be any different between them and us.
"It's a little different, our schedule here, because I think our next few here are against Western Conference teams. So, quote-unquote, they're not 'four-point games,' but they mean something to us. Hopefully we can get some points tonight, punch our ticket, and see where we slide in from there. I wouldn't sit here and say they're any more desperate than we should be."
Tampa Bay and Dallas have faced off just one time this season, with the Lightning defeating the Stars 3-1 at AMALIE Arena on January 15. Esa Lindell opened the scoring for Dallas in the first period at the 13:48 mark, but Brayden Point answered with a power-play goal in the final minute of the opening frame to tie the game at one.
The Lightning never looked back from there, outshooting Dallas 9-2 in the second period before Ross Colton broke the tie 10:37 into the third period with his fifth goal of the season. Colton took a beautiful pass from Nikita Kucherov and barreled in on a breakaway, rifling a shot bar-down on Anton Khudobin and igniting the crowd at AMALIE Arena. Alex Killorn added an empty-net goal with 41 seconds remaining to seal the 3-1 win for Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasilevskiy got the start in goal for the Bolts and stopped 19-of-20 shots to earn the win.
With a playoff berth seemingly inevitable for Tampa Bay, there is still plenty of motivation to get everything heading in the right direction before the start of the postseason. A team that has been to the playoffs in four-straight seasons, the Lightning know how important it is to maintain positive habits at the end of the regular season and carry those habits into the postseason.
"You want to have a good vibe going," Cooper said. "You don't want to sit here and say, 'Oh we've got to play out the last 10 games here. We know what we have to do in the playoffs.' You don't want that mentality. You want the guys feeling good about themselves going in.
"You put yourselves in the position knowing that games are going to be 2-1. Can we win those games? The last couple games now, we've kind of shown ourselves that those are the games we have to learn to be comfortable with going into the playoffs and hopefully that continues."
