Why are the Tampa Bay Lightning so Good?

The Tampa Bay Lightning are now back-to-back Stanley Cup champs. Today I will be breaking down the past two years that the Lightning has had to be able to understand how they are so good.

Tampa Bay Lightning taking a picture of the Stanley Cup with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Credit: nbcsports.com

As we already know, the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Montreal Canadiens in the 2021 NHL Stanley Cup Final, winning back-to-back Stanley Cups, defeating the Dallas Stars last year. But the past five series, Tampa goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy has shut out every team in the series-clinching game. The last time Vasilevskiy didn't do that was September 17, 2020, against the New York Islanders in the Eastern Conference Finals. Tampa won the game narrowly, winning 2-1 in overtime. In those five series, Vasilevskiy has shut out the team 1-0 twice, 2-0 twice, and 4-0 once combining to save 120 straight shots in series-clinching shutout games.

In 2020, the Tampa Bay Lightning held the top two spots for the most points in the playoffs that year. In 2021, they held the top five spots. In the past two seasons, Nikita Kucherov has held the top spot for most points in the playoffs. Kucherov got 34 points in 25 games last year, averaging 1.36 points per game. This year, Kucherov got 32 points in 23 games, averaging 1.40 points per game. Say the Lightning make the Finals again next year, if Kucherov stays on the path that he is on, he will average 1.44 points per game next year while getting about 36 points. Brayden Point, on the other hand, decreased. He went from getting 33 points in 23 games, to getting 23 points in 23 games. Now I will say, still getting 1 point a game is impressive. But if he continues on this slope, we could predict his future playoff statistics.

Now let's start from the beginning. Where did this team start at the beginning of the 2019-20 season? Coming into the season, the Lightning were at a low point. They won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2019 and tied the Detroit Red Wings for the most wins in a regular season. The only problem was, they didn’t win a single playoff game as they got swept in the first round by the Columbus Blue Jackets. So they were coming into this season looking for revenge. That first-round loss lit a fire that became a dynasty. Tampa opened up the season with a 5-2 win over the Florida Panthers. That win is the first stepping stone of a good season. The first month of every NHL season is crucial. That month sets you up for what would be your future of that season. In that first month of the season, Tampa would go 6-4-2, enough for 14 points in 12 games. Now they didn’t know it yet, but every point mattered in this season as it was cut short due to COVID. So that meant the NHL was going off of point percentage.

So as we delve into the season, let’s go onto the statistical side of things. Now to save time, I will probably cut up this article into a series of blogs because I don’t want it to be too long. Before I start talking about Tampa’s stats, I’m going to list the most important stats to a team in order of my opinion.

First off we have the faceoffs. Faceoffs are critical to every game in the season. Every time there is a stoppage of play, the next play begins with a faceoff. And the only way to get possession at the start of that play is to win the faceoff. So that’s why the faceoff is so critical. You can’t score unless you have possession right? The more faceoffs you win in a game, the higher probability you will have of winning that game.

Secondly, the shots on goal. There is a reason that this stat is above the shot attempts. That reason is, you can’t score unless you put the puck on net. As the Great One once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Also meaning, if you don’t put the puck on net, you can’t score. Now, statistically, if you have more shots on goal, you will win the game. But it doesn’t work that way. Because you also have to put in the fact of the goalie and the defense of the team. Sometimes you just run into a hot goalie. But you can’t score unless you put the puck on net so that is why this is number two.

Third, the penalty minutes. In each game, in my opinion, you should have fewer penalty minutes than you did the game before. If you have no penalty minutes, then keep it that way. The fewer penalties the better. The reason is that every time you get a penalty, the other team has an advantage for 2-5 minutes. And because they have that advantage, the more likely they are to score. But also as important as penalty minutes are the power play. Because if the other team makes a mistake and gets a penalty, you need to make sure that you capitalize on that. If you constantly don’t score on the power play, then that is an issue. Your power play and penalty kill percentage have to be good so that you can win games.

Lastly, we have the shot attempts. Now, like I said you can’t score unless you get it on goal. But you also can’t score if you don’t make the attempt to shoot. Now shot attempts are all the attempts to make a shot, including shots on goal. So blocked shots, missed shots, shots on goal, and some others that I am probably missing are all included in the shot attempts category. It’s kind of hard to tell if you want higher or lower, but what I will say is that you want your shot attempts as close to your shots on goal as possible.

So in this first part, I am just going to talk about the faceoffs, as I said it was the most important stat, in my opinion. Tampa played a total of 70 games in the shortened 2019-20 season. In those 70 games, Tampa had a total of 3245 faceoffs. Now, I said that if you want to have a good game, you have to win over 50% of the faceoffs. Tampa did that 33 times which is just under the 50% mark for the entire season. In those 33 times that they won the most faceoffs, they won 20 of those games. Which meant that they only lost 11 of those games. That’s a pretty good record if you’re telling me. Now if we go back to the 3245 faceoffs, we can see how many they won, and how many they lost. Now if my math is correct, the percentage should be below 50% since they didn’t win the faceoffs 50% of the total games. But actually, that’s wrong. That is wrong because you have to take into account that Tampa sometimes ties the number of faceoffs won with other teams and that the number of faceoffs won and lost per game varies. The most Tampa won in a game was 37, but the least they won was only 13. And in that game, the Toronto Maple Leafs only had 16 faceoffs won. This means even with only 13 faceoff wins, they almost won the majority of the faceoffs. Very rarely will you see a team win most of the faceoffs with more than 30 losses. But hey, Tampa did that on December 12 against the Dallas Stars where they won 33 faceoffs and they lost 32.

But my point is, Tampa did pretty well when winning most of the faceoffs in a game. Ranging from their lowest percentage of 50.8% to their highest one of 73%. Faceoffs are, all around, a crucial part of a hockey game. They determine who will have the momentum swing at the start of a play. One faceoff win can change the entire pace of the game.

Now I could ramble about faceoffs all day but I won’t...right now. I will probably get in about faceoffs later in this series. But I am only starting in this incredible journey of hockey stats.

Stats from hockeyreference.com