The NHL playoffs are always unpredictable. That’s just the way it is, but if you told me on April 10th that Tampa would get swept out of the playoffs by Columbus this season, I would’ve actually been offended by your stupidity. The Bolts were the best team in hockey since the ‘95-96 Red Wings. Thinking that they might lose even one game to the Blue Jackets seemed insane. Yet, here we are 12 days later and almost a week after Columbus swept the Lightning out of the playoffs, and people are still dumbfounded. Even myself.

So, how did this happen? How did Tampa Bay go from pure domination in the regular season to embarrassment/shame in less than two weeks? As my pops Larry Silvers pointed out, coaching deserves a large part of the blame. Coach Cooper was flat out torched by Coach Tortorella. Torts coached circles around Coop and his staff. It was like a chess match that ended in check-mate after 4 moves.

While I agree that coaching was a large part of this train-wreck, I look more to the players for answers. Certain guys who had been there for Tampa all season were nowhere to be found. Stamkos, Kucherov, and Point were the Bolts’ top scorers this season. These three combined for 127 goals through 82 games. In playoffs they combined for 2 goals in 4 games. I hate to use the old cliché that “your best players have to be your best players in the playoffs,” but it’s so true. These three were nowhere to be found during games 1-3, and the two goals they did have were in game 4 when it was already too late.

Offense wasn’t the only issue. Defense was horrendous. All of them. McDonaugh is one of my favorite players in the NHL and I think he doesn’t get the credit he rightfully deserves as an elite defenseman; but he was lost. He was out of position, out of focus, and just flat-out bad at hockey for 4 games. He was a -6 through 4 games. Hedman was very clearly concussed and I don’t care what anybody says. He was listed as having an “upper body injury,” but if you watched him in his short time in this series, you can tell it was a C-word. His errors were all mental. Anderson’s goal in game 1 might’ve been the worst play I’ve ever seen Hedman make. He turned away from Anderson and spun towards the boards, leaving the middle of the ice in the D-zone WIDE open for this guy to walk in and snipe city. Do you know who doesn’t do that? Players without concussions.

Speaking of snipe city, that was Vasilevsky’s net for 4 games. Vasy was another Bolt who looked completely lost. Any shot that was high blocker was almost a guarantee to go in, especially on the power-play. An .856 sv% and a 3.83 GAA is not a great look for the Vezina finalist. I’m not sure what happened between April 6th and April 11th, but Vasy did not look like himself. At certain points of each game, there were times (many times) that the Lightning needed a big save and didn’t get it. Think back to game 1 when the Lightning had a 3-0 choke hold on the game at the end of the first. Bobrovsky started to make big save after big save and Columbus built momentum off of it. Imagine if Vasy came up big on the Foligno breakaway or the Anderson goal. Perhaps the Bolts hold on to win 3-2 and the entire series goes differently. Obviously this is a hypothetical situation, but it’s just an example of how just one save could’ve made a huge difference. Too bad for the Lightning, they didn’t get it and Vasy was unable to find his game.

Theres not one person or event that holds 100% of the blame. It was a collection of poor effort and bad decisions that all added up very quickly to dismantle Tampa’s cup hopes. Fortunately for them, they’re still an amazingly talented group with plenty of good/young players sticking around for next year. I’m sure many of them learned about the harsh nature of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and gained at least some sort of experience from this. And looking ahead to next year they can always ask themselves this: “can it get any worse than what happened last season?” Probably not.

Written by Andrew Silvers

Twitter/Instagram: @asilvers55

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