Five teams played their 40th game of the season Saturday. That includes the Tampa Bay Lightning, the last team for me to cover today. Here's the scoop on the Lightning.
Tampa Bay Lightning: 17-20-3, good for 37 points:
Last season, the Lightning were the fifth seed and made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. This season, they are the third worst team in the Eastern Conference. I don't think they were as good as their record last season. I don't think they are as bad as their record this season. Yet here we are. They truly have played poorly, as their minus-27 goal differential can attest to. At least they are 11-5-0 at home.
Steve Stamkos remains one of the league's best players. He has the most goals in the NHL with 28 and he leads the team with 45 points, also among the league's best totals. Martin St. Louis has 31 points in 35 games, and Vinny Lecavalier has 28 points of his own. On defense, Marc-Andre Bergeron has 23 points and is a plus-7, while many of his defensive counterparts have struggled.
Their biggest issue, however, was trying to string one more season out of Dwayne Roloson. Clearly, he wasn't up to it. In 20 games, 16 starts, he has an atrocious .881 save percentage. As such, the Lightning have had to turn to Mathieu Garon, who has a .903 SV%, which at least isn't terrible.
Just turning away from Roloson may help salvage Tampa's season a bit. However, at this point I think the playoffs are off the table. Maybe they will do what New Jersey did last year and do well enough in the second half of the season to be at least mildly respectable, but anything beyond that seems extremely unlikely.
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