Tampa Bay Lightning: Top 4 reasons they have struggled this season
By Kyle Pereira
The Tampa Bay Lightning have followed up their historically good 62-win 2018-19 season with a mediocre record through 27 games in 2019-20, sitting at 14-10-3. It begs the question, what’s going wrong in Tampa Bay?
When you looked at the Tampa Bay Lightning last season, they were dominant from top to bottom. The Lightning had elite forwards and defensemen. They also having the Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. Before this season began, the Lightning gave up very little, in the form of JT Miller, Adam Erne, Ryan Callahan, and Dan Girardi, while adding Stanley Cup-winning Patrick Maroon and the recently bought out, but still solid, Kevin Shattenkirk.
Meanwhile, they re-signed Brayden Point, Cedric Paquette, and Braydon Coburn, and called up young AHL stud Carter Verhaeghe. Plus, the Lightning made some minor additions, signing Gemel Smith and Luke Witkowski, which showed they wanted to solve their issue of not being heavy enough to win in the postseason.
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You’d think that the addition by subtraction ideology put into place by general manager Julien BriseBois would have paid major dividends. He added experience while retaining major core pieces and instilling some youth and further solidified the defensive depth, even when it wasn’t deemed necessary.
This season, certain players have stepped up their games. For example, Ondrej Palat had one of, if not, the worst season of his career last year, yet this season he looks far better. The criminally underrated Alex Killorn has given Lightning fans a reason to give him more respect than what was previously shown.
Shattenkirk, who they brought in for this season as previously mentioned, but he has also proven to be far better than he was last season. So, again, what has gone so horribly wrong? Let’s take a look at the top four reasons why the Bolts haven’t been the juggernaut everyone expected them to be this season.