Saturday afternoon turned into a nightmare for the Tampa Bay Lightning as the club lost heavily 8-1 to the Stars in Dallas.
Despite everything, Florida team head coach Jon Cooper doesn’t want to hit the “panic” button.
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“Listen, in an 82-game season there will be a game like this,” he told reporters after the game. You have the impression that all shots are going into the goal, but not yours. These are things that happen.
However, this loss is made all the more difficult to swallow because it is part of a complicated sequence for the Lightning after the team lost its last four games.
“Usually you turn the page and move on to the next game. What does [cette défaite] What’s difficult is that the three [matchs] In the last few games we felt like we probably could have gotten at least a point in two of those games, but we don’t do that and all of a sudden you lose four games in a row.
Vasilevskiy in trouble
This slump also coincides with the return of Andrei Vasilevskiy to the Bolts cage. The Russian goalkeeper has only one win in four games so far and has a goals against average of 3.87 and an efficiency percentage of 0.859.
He conceded six goals on 25 shots against the Stars before giving way to Jonas Johansson in the third period.
However, Cooper defended his star goalkeeper and attributed his problems to bad luck.
“Listen, there are times when a goalkeeper is unlucky,” analyzed the Lightning pilot. […] A goalkeeper might say to himself: “I can’t believe this [buts] ‘Come back,’ but we put him in these situations.”
“Again, it’s his third or fourth game in almost a year, so he’s getting used to it again. He is still the best in the world and he is the one we want to see in front of our gates.”
With this setback, Tampa Bay sits at 10-10-5, good for fifth place in the Atlantic Division. Cooper’s players will look to get revenge at home against Dallas on Monday.