TAMPA, Fla. _ The Lightning haven't even brought their A game yet and they are tied with the Capitals after four games of the Eastern Conference final.
"I don't think we've played consistent enough," Lightning coach Jon Cooper admitted. "That's probably the big thing. Let's string together three periods. Not one here, take one off. One here. That's what we got to be better at."
Shoot, if the Lightning does that, this thing is over and they will play for the Stanley Cup.
And, you know, you have to think that Tampa Bay is due to bring its best game.
Well, unless the Capitals are the reason the Lightning haven't played their A game. Cooper also admitted this: "There's another team out there."
Yeah, a real good one.
Who knows what's going to happen? This series has made no sense from the start.
Washington won two games in Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay won two games in Washington. The Lightning won a game they could have easily lost in Game 4.
"I mean the series could have been over by now," Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. "We've given ourselves some new life, but there's still a long way to go."
How did the teams get here?
"It doesn't matter," Cooper said. "The series is tied 2-2. It doesn't matter how you got there. It's still 2-2."
But it does matter a little, if for nothing else than the Lightning's mood and attitude are certainly different now than it was after losing the first two games. Killorn said Friday that no one knew for sure what was going to happen when the series shifted to Washington with the Lightning in a 2-0 hole.
"Let's be honest, you're down 0-2 at home, you're on life support," Cooper said. "That was basically what it was."
The Lightning easily could have thrown in the towel. Cooper said the team was part angry, part embarrassed, part surprised.
"At first, you feel bad for yourself," Killorn said. "But we're a pretty optimistic group."
So the Lightning did the only thing they could do. They rolled up their sleeves and went back to work.
They outplayed the Caps in a Game 3 victory, then stole Game 4 thanks to goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy and his 36 saves.
Wait. Stop right here a second. Looking back, maybe Game 4 wasn't as lopsided as it first appeared. The Lightning's opening period was fine until they had to kill a bunch of penalties in the final few minutes. The penalty killers were zapped by overuse and those who don't kill penalties were zapped by lack of use. All that led to a rough second period that had the Lightning sweating.
OK, so yeah, the second period was a mess. Even the players noticed that.
"You notice because when you're playing most of your shifts in the defensive zone, guys get frustrated," Killorn said. "Guys want to be playing offense. We want to help out. We feel bad for our goalie. We're putting him a tough position."
But the Lightning never panicked, and they actually played a really solid third period. Killorn scored the ultimate winner with just over eight minutes left in a period the Lightning controlled. In fact, Tampa Bay appears to have gathered much momentum from Game 4.
"If there's anything we can use going forward here, it's that mindset we had, focus, that determination, that locked in both ways," Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh said. "We still carried the play pretty well there."
So now the team moves on to Game 5 back at Amalie Arena. A little more confident. A little less stressed.
"I believe we will be a different team here than we showed in Games 1 and 2," Cooper said. "I just know we're a different group coming into Game 5 mentally than we were in Game 1."
That's because of the two games in Washington.
"Game 3 went a lot of miles to help us," Cooper said. "Did we like the result of Game 4? Yes. Did we like our complete performance? Probably not. But we feel like we've got a formula to win this series."
