Why are the Tampa Bay Lightning so Good? Part 4

Here we go, the start of the 2021 season. That also means that it’s time for part 4 of this series.

Tampa Bay Lightning raising their 2020 Stanley Cup Banner. Source: nhl.com

The 2021 season was anything but ordinary. 4 new divisions were put up because of COVID-19. You would only play those teams in your division until the semifinals of the playoffs. The Lightning was placed in the Central Division, different from their original Atlantic Division. Tampa would play each team in their division 8 times and they would play each game without a crowd, for the time being. On January 13, 2021, the NHL season started for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Tampa would open up the 2021 NHL season against the Chicago Blackhawks. They would prove themselves to be a top contender in the Central Division as they would go on to win 5-1. They would also win the next game 2 days later, 5-2. Because of these new divisions and new schedule, each team would play almost every other day and they would also have at least two games against the same team in a row. Causing the regular season to end in about 4 short months. At the halfway point, Tampa would have a nice record of 20-6-2, causing them to be second in the Central Division, only behind the Florida Panthers. At this point, Tampa has scored a total of 102 goals and has only allowed 67. Good enough for 3rd and 6th in the league respectively. They would also be tied for the most wins in the league with the Carolina Hurricanes; also tied for most points in the league with 3 other teams.

Tampa would win the next 4 games after the midway point, but then they would lose the next 3 after that. They would finish off the season by losing the last 3 games, 2 of which were against the Florida Panthers. After all the games were finished, Tampa earned the 3rd seed in the Central Division and a playoff berth, their 4th straight. Tampa would finish the season by scoring 181 goals, good enough for 8th in the league. They would also only give up 147, 6th in the league. Brayden Point would lead the team with 48 points, an average of 0.86 a game. He would also lead the team in goals with 23, but not assists. That was led by defenseman Victor Hedman who had 36. Andrei Vasilevskiy would continue to be the team’s starting goalie, starting 42 of the games. He had a record of 31-10-1 with a .925 Save percentage and a 2.21 GAA.

Tampa would do the best against the Chicago Blackhawks, with a record of 7-0-1 against them. They also scored an average of 4.63 goals which would be the most against any team that they played. But the least amount of goals allowed by a team was with the Dallas Stars, allowing only 1.88 goals a game. Tampa would do the worst against their cross-state rival, the Florida Panthers. Tampa would have a record of 3-5-0 against them. The Panthers would be the only team other than the Carolina Hurricanes, to score more goals on average than the Panthers in each game. The Panthers would be the only team that the Lightning would have a losing record against, and now the Lightning would have to play them in the first round of the playoffs. Besides having the only losing record against the Panthers, they did have the second best odds to win the cup. The Lightning had a +400 odds to go back-to-back.

Tampa would have more shots than their opponent 30 times during the regular season. When they had more shots, they would average a total of 32.6 shots, but overall they averaged 30.2 shots a game. Of those 30 games, Tampa would win 19 of those games, with 5 of those being in either overtime or a shootout. But this year, home-ice advantage doesn’t really matter. In home-ice advantage, fans are a crucial part of that advantage. So when there are no fans, it makes it really hard to determine if there was home-ice advantage or not. Their opponents would average an amount of 28.27 shots per game. Almost 2 fewer shots than the Lightning.

The stats shots are Corsi are actually related. If you remember, the Corsi is the combination of the shots, missed shots, and blocked shots by one team. When Tampa had more shots than the other team, their Corsi For percentage was higher than 50 20 times. It was at exactly 50 5 times, and 5 times their Corsi For percentage was less than 50. But, only 7 times was the Corsi For percentage over 50 when they had fewer shots, or they tied the number of shots with their opponent. Tampa averaged a Corsi For of 44.02 per game, and their opponents averaged 40.68 per game. Making Tampa’s Corsi Percentage an average of 52.0 per game. When Tampa had a higher number of shots and a Corsi For percentage of over 50, their record was 11-7-2, with both overtime losses being in a shootout.

Tampa only had more penalty minutes than the other team 11 times this year, a big upgrade from last year. Even with that, they still averaged 10.66 penalty minutes per game. I think the reason for that was due to a game on May 8 against the Florida Panthers which had a total of 154 penalty minutes across the two teams. Tampa would have a total of 78 penalty minutes that game, and Florida had 76. Which led to 5 power-play opportunities for Tampa and 6 for the Panthers. Tampa would not be able to capitalize on any of them, but Florida was able to capitalize on one of them. As a result, Florida was able to win the game, 5-1. If we remove that one game from the total, Tampa’s average penalty minutes a game is 9.44. Tampa would have a total of 180 power-play opportunities this season, capitalizing on only 40 of them. Causing them to have a 22.22% power-play percentage, putting them in 9th in the league. Their opponents were 29 or 183 on the power-play, giving them a 15.85% power-play percentage, which would put them at 25th. This would put Tampa’s penalty-killing percentage at 84.15% and 4th in the league.

Last but not least, the faceoffs. Tampa would win more faceoffs than the other team a total of 24 times, they would tie the number of faceoffs 7 times, and they would have fewer faceoff wins than their opponent 25 times. So it’s about even. But, Tampa would average an amount of 22.3 faceoff wins per game, and 22.5 faceoff losses. So again, it is fairly even and split. When Tampa had more faceoff wins than the other team, they had a record of 12-9-2, including 2 overtime wins. Every time they had 30 or more faceoff wins, they would have more faceoff wins than the other team. But, they would rarely win more of the faceoffs if they had 22 faceoff wins.

But like I was saying, Tampa would have to play the Florida Panthers in the first round. Soon, we will find out how they did it, in the next, and final part of this series.

Stats from: hockey-reference.com