Raw Charge
Summary
Lightning News The Tampa Bay Lightning capped off an undefeated opening season homestand last night with their 3-2 victory over the Minnesota Wild at Benchmark International Arena, the Lightning’s third in a row. Newly acquired John Carlson and Dennis Hildeby made their marks with great performances in the game. Carlson recorded the Lightning’s first power-play goal of the year with his second goal of the game to put the Lightning ahead 3-1 and Dennis Hildeby played a great first game with the Lightning while stopping 34/36 Minnesota shots, including all 15 he faced in the third period to come away with his first victory in his first game with the Lightning. [ Raw Charge ] The Lightning power play has not gotten the results through the first four games on the year, going scoreless in their first 13 opportunities before last night’s game against Minnesota. Coach John Cooper has been tinkering with the power-play units in practice but did not follow through with those changes in last night’s game. Carlson did score a PPG, but the other two power play attempts did not lead to much confidence with the current set up. Could Cooper run with this power play setup in the future? [ Raw Charge ] The Lightning recently sent forward Jansen Harkins to Syracuse which led many to believe that could mean the return of Dominic James. James did not get the tap for last night’s game against Minnesota but chances are very high he’ll get a sweater on Saturday in Long Island. What does the speedy young forward bring to the table? [ Bolts by the Bay ] I was in attendance in the game last night and the one player that stuck out to me in a positive way was Max Crozier. He was all over the ice and found himself creating chaos in front of the Wild net multiple times and was clearly getting under the skin of the Wild players with his physical play. Crozier also made up for some other mistakes by the Lightning by breaking up several opportunities by the Wild before they could even begin. Benjamin Pierce had a good piece about Crozier and how Max’s “hard-nosed” style fits in perfectly with what Jon Cooper expects out of his defense. [ NHL ] League News Budding superstar Macklin Celebrini was injured for the San Jose Sharks and missed his second straight game last night in St. Louis. Celebrini doesn’t appear to be out for much longer as he is skating with the team. The Sharks looked lethargic in his first game out falling to the Stars 5-0 in Dallas but they played much better in a 3-2 comeback win in overtime against the Blues last night. [ NHL ] Celebrini wasn’t the only star player injured in the NHL this week. The Florida Panthers already avoided catastrophic news with the injury of Alexsander Barkov who is out for 6-8 weeks but then watched as Brad Marchand went down with another ugly leg injury. There’s been nothing official from the team but reports are that Marchand’s injury is “weeks, not months” which again would be relatively welcome news to Panthers fans. [ Heavy ] In case you missed it, the Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks played two games to open the season last week and recorded 27 combined goals in those two games. While it may not be the 1980s anymore, it’s felt that way in the NHL to begin the new 84 game schedule. There was even a goalie goal in the first game of the year scored by Igor Shesterkin against the Lightning. Last year was the first under .900 league-wide save percentage in three decades and scoring is up again so far this season while save percentages are still trending down. [ ESPN ] There’s already been a few trades despite the new NHL season only beginning a few weeks ago. The Penguins and Oilers were the latest teams to make a transaction with Pittsburgh sending forward Filip Hallander to Edmonton in exchange for defenseman Spencer Stastney. [ Pensburgh ] [ Oilers Nation ]