Burns: 3 Things we learned from another shutout loss in Carolina

The Tampa Bay Lightning weren't shut out once during the 2019-20 regular season and their 25-game postseason run to the Stanley Cup.
Through 15 games of the 2020-21 season, the Lightning have already been blanked twice.
And both have come at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena.

After dropping a 1-0 overtime game to the Canes January 28, the Lightning continued their inability to penetrate the brick wall Carolina set up around its net in a 4-0 defeat Saturday night in Raleigh. Carolina scored the game's opening goal 2:19 into the second period on a fluky deflection, and the Lightning played catch up the rest of the way. The Bolts only generated 24 shots on Carolina goalie Alex Nedeljkovic's net, and few of them were quality scoring chances. The Hurricanes wouldn't let the Lightning get inside of them and were relentless anytime the Bolts had a sliver of daylight on goal to shut down the opportunity.
Tampa Bay will get a few more cracks at Carolina. And soon. The two teams will meet eight times this season and three times over the next five days.
For the Lightning, it's back to the video room to figure out to break through Carolina's impenetrable fortress.
1. CHASING THE GAME
The first period of Saturday's contest was played evenly, neither team really able to generate much offense as the focus from both was playing sound defense and forcing the opposition into a mistake.
That approach continued into the second period.
But an unlucky goal got Carolina on the board.
And from that point, the Lightning got out of their game in an effort to make up the deficit.
On the scoring play, Martin Necas threw the puck on net from the right wall. The shot was deflected by Vincent Trocheck in the lower right circle up into the air, off the shoulder of Alex Killorn and past Andrei Vasilevskiy to put Carolina in front 1-0 at 2:19 of the middle frame.
"We played four 20-minute periods of scoreless hockey against them, and they got a lucky one," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said, referring to the three periods earlier this season the Bolts kept Carolina off the board in a 1-0 overtime loss January 28. "That's what happens against two good teams. They had a lucky one went in, and then we chased it."
Up 1-0, Carolina settled even deeper into its defensive-minded game, focusing mainly on keeping the Lightning from possessing the puck for any length of time. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, opened up more, especially after falling behind 2-0 when Sebastian Aho forced a turnover inside the offensive zone and deposited the puck over the shoulder of Vasilevskiy at 15:30 of the second.
That goal proved to be the dagger for the Lightning.
Unable to create much offensively in the normal flow of the game, they started taking more chances in the third and were punished again, first when former Lightning forward Cedric Paquette got open in the slot for a shot early in the third and buried it and later when Andrei Svechnikov scored on an empty net as the Lightning were forced to pull Vasilevskiy with just under three minutes to go and trailing by three goals.
"I think in the third we only had three or four shots," Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. "We strayed away from the game plan a little bit, and they bounced on some turnovers that we had and scored. We just have to come in with the mindset that it's going to be a really close game and be comfortable with that, which I know our group is. I expect a good bounce back game from us next game."
2. NOT EFFICIENT ENOUGH OFFENSIVELY
Opportunities were there for the Lightning Saturday night.
The Hurricanes weren't completely successful eliminating all of Tampa Bay's threats.
But too often, the Bolts were a tick slow or overpassed looking for the perfect scoring play, and that played right into Carolina's hands.
A couple of sequences in the third period were a perfect example of how the Lightning were often their own worst enemy when it came to offensive execution.
On the first, Patrick Maroon beat Carolina goalie Alex Nedeljkovic to a puck behind the Canes goal and had a partially-open target as he came out from behind the net. Alex Volkov was set up on the back post. Maroon had a chance to shoot early too. But he ended up doing neither. He opted against passing to Volkov as the Russian likely would have had his stick tied up by a recovering Carolina defense on the shot attempt. Maroon passed up the initial shot as he surveyed his options. By the time he took the shot, Nedeljkovic was back in his net. It didn't matter, though, as both of Maroon's shots were blocked away and never reached the Carolina netminder.
What should have been a grade-A scoring opportunity evaporated into two blocked shots and nothing on net.
Moments later, nearly an identical play happened with Brayden Point, who intercepted a puck from Nedeljkovic behind the Carolina net. Point couldn't corral the bouncing puck in time to catch Nedeljkovic out of position, however, and he rushed his shot once he did get control of the puck and shot off the side of the net.
Those two plays were emblematic of Tampa Bay's troubles all evening. Carolina defended brilliantly. When an opportunity did present itself, the Lightning were slightly off in their execution. And the Hurricanes recovered quickly to eliminate any subsequent threats.
"Offensively we've been trying to get a little too pretty with it, maybe because it's worked in the past," Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. "Against a team like this who's so defensively sound, they don't give up much, you've got to get those greasy ones and just get as many shots on net to increase the odds.
3. TURNOVERS AT INOPPORTUNE TIMES
Tampa Bay didn't turn the puck over nearly as much as it did in a 6-4 loss to the Florida Panthers Monday. In that contest, the Lightning gave the puck up with regularity, fueling a Panthers offense that scored four-consecutive goals in the second period to take control of that contest.
The Bolts were much better protecting the puck against Carolina.
But when they did turn it over, it often led to disaster.
Sebastian Aho's goal late in the second period was a backbreaker for the Bolts. The Lightning only trailed by a goal and were still playing somewhat within their game plan. They practiced playing a north-south game all week during their unexpected layoff, working on getting the puck out of their zone quickly and transitioning into a break the other way. Brayden Point had an opportunity to start a rush after a falling Ryan McDonagh worked the puck over to Ondrej Palat in his own end and Palat hit a speeding Point with a pass.
Point started to race up the wall but pulled up as he was being cut off. He tried to get the puck back to Palat but had his pass disrupted, the puck ending up on the stick of Aho.
In alone, Aho made a nice move at the net to pop a shot over Vasilevskiy's shoulder, and the Lightning found themselves trailing 2-0, a near-insurmountable deficit with the way the Canes were defending.
"There's not a lot of time and space out there," Stamkos said. "We kind of had the game plan this week of playing quick. I thought we did, but then when we're forcing things trying to get that goal because we're not seeing the results and then a couple turnovers and they take advantage. It's about staying patient, especially in these games, we need to know coming in it's going to be low scoring. It's going to be tight and we just have to be fine with that. It's not the run and gun. Those days of our team need to be over and they were over and that's why we have success. We just need to stay composed in these tight games which I know we're capable of and we're going to be fine."
The Bolts were trying to get the puck out of their own end in the third period when Pat Maroon worked the puck into the middle of the ice for Alexander Volkov, who tried to skate it out but ran right into Jordan Martinook.
Martinook took the puck away and got off a quick shot that was turned aside by Vasilevskiy, but the rebound hopped right to Jake Bean in the right circle. Bean spotted a wide open Cedric Paquette in the slot, and the former Lightning center was true with his scoring chance against his former team for his first goal as a member of the Hurricanes.
At 3-0 early in the third, the game was out of reach for the Lightning.
"We have pucks our stick," Cooper said. "They play a pressure game, so they try and pressure you, but we've got pucks on our stick. When the team is thinking one thing and you're as an individual are thinking another, that's when you get in trouble. For the first half of that game, we're doing everything we wanted to, it's just a 0-0 game. Unfortunately, we got behind and we started chasing and we just slipped into a few bad habits after that."