Burns: 3 Things we learned from sweeping the homestand

Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said the key to the two-game series format teams are playing in this COVID-shortened regular season is to win the opening game and just try to munch points in the second.
If that's their mentality, the Lightning gorged themselves on all the home cooking they had this week.
Tampa Bay completed a four-game sweep of their homestand following a 3-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings Friday at AMALIE Arena. After falling behind 1-0 in the opening period, Patrick Maroon responded with his first goal of the season four minutes later and Barclay Goodrow added a pair of tallies -- the game-winner and an empty-netter - for the first multi-goal game of his career, handing the Bolts their fourth-consecutive victory.

The Lightning have won six straight at home to start 2020-21 and matched the franchise record for most home wins to begin a season set previously in 2017-18.
Tampa Bay pushed its point streak against Detroit in the regular season to 19 games, the Lightning going 18-0-1 versus the Red Wings dating to February 3, 2016.
The Lightning also won their 16th in a row at home over Detroit, equaling the longest active home win streak against one opponent in the NHL (Philly also owns a 16-game active home win streak over Chicago).
Tampa Bay goes on the road for their next four contests, beginning with a back-to-back set Monday and Tuesday in Nashville.
Here's hoping they find the Nashville hot chicken to be just as tasty.

1. THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
The Lightning have gotten balanced scoring all season. Only once entering Friday's Detroit game had a Tampa Bay player scored more than one goal in a game, that coming on Monday when Yanni Gourde netted two against Nashville.
Otherwise, it's a been a different scorer each time for the Lightning. And multiple lines have been contributing as well.
In Friday's win over Detroit, however, it was a couple of guys who aren't used to finding the back of the net who propelled the Lightning to victory.
Patrick Maroon scored his first goal of the season and recorded his first point with his blast from center point a few strides inside the blue line, Alex Killorn providing a screen in front to shield the eyes of Detroit goalie Thomas Greiss.
"It's nice to get that one…Especially for me, I got an opportunity in Carolina, they were coming, just haven't buried them," Maroon said. "Killer made a great screen on my shot. I just tried to fire it home. I found a lane there."
Maroon was the last Lightning skater without a point entering the Detroit game. With his goal, all 20 Lightning skaters who have played in a game have gotten on the scoresheet.
"It's nice for me to get on the board again," he said. "Hopefully this can trend and the floodgates kind of open for me and I can build off my game here."
In the second, Barclay Goodrow hammered a shot from distance past Greiss with two-and-a-half minutes to go in the period to give Tampa Bay its first lead. Goodrow's goal would hold up as the game-winner, his first as a member of the Lightning.
And late in the game, Goodrow added an empty-net goal with 28 seconds remaining for his first career game with multiple goals.
With Maroon and Goodrow tallying Friday, 14 different Lightning players have scored goals this season, underscoring just how deep the offensive firepower runs on this team.

2. SLOPPY SECONDS
Pat Maroon called the second period "the worst" the Lightning have played all season.
Head coach Jon Cooper agreed.
Tampa Bay struggled against a Detroit team determined to get points out of the two-game set versus the Lightning. After being overwhelmed at the start of Wednesday's game and never really recovering, the Red Wings had an answer for how to play the Lightning two days later and made life frustrating for the Bolts, especially in the second.
"I thought they played really solid tonight," Maroon said. "They gave us their best effort. I thought they did a really good job in the neutral zone tonight. They clogged it up and made it difficult for us to get through. That led into a bad, bad second period."
Detroit outshot Tampa Bay 12-9 in the second. And the number of good scoring chances for the Red Wings far exceeded what the Lightning were able to muster.
"We knew they were going to come out hard and play their best," Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev said. "They're on a long road trip and they want to get some points. We didn't have the right approach. We didn't play well. We gave them a lot of scoring chances and made it easy on them."
The Lightning regrouped in the second intermission. Sergachev recalled how the veterans spoke up and said the right things as well as the coaching staff. Maroon said the team settled down between periods and got back to playing Tampa Bay Lightning hockey.
"It's a hard league to win games in," Cooper said. "It doesn't matter where you are in the standings, the other team's trying. It's one thing if execution isn't quite there, but we were getting outworked. It doesn't take skill to get outworked. And so we had to get back to that."

3. THE RIGHT RESPONSE
The third period was much better from the Lightning.
Holding a 2-1 lead, the Bolts clamped down defensively and didn't give Detroit much of anything in the way of a good scoring opportunity. The Red Wings had just four shots on goal for the entire period despite their desperate attempts to generate the game-tying goal.
"That's a good sign that we can kind of settle back in, go out there and play the right way and we get rewarded by doing that," Maroon said. "You saw it in the playoffs last year, we played smart, we played predictable and we got rewarded. So I think we got back to that in the third period but we've got to find a way to play like that a full 60."
The one good look Detroit did get in the third, which came with about five minutes to play when the puck swung from one side of the ice to the other for a wide-open Dylan Larkin to one time from the right circle, Andrei Vasilevskiy quickly slid over to make the stop and preserve the win.
"You never know what he's going to pull out of his magic hat," Sergachev said. "He's our leader."
The Lightning weren't perfect on Friday. They didn't generate much offense against a Detroit team at the bottom of the standings. The had problems navigating the neutral zone. They let Detroit play in their own end for long stretches at times.
But in the end, the Lightning did what they had to do to come out of the contest with another victory and two points. And they managed the game expertly down the stretch to get there.
"I give the guys credit because as much of a stinker as the second period was, hold them to four shots, we give up one big-time chance and our goalie was there to make the save but other than that I didn't think they threatened too much," Cooper said. "And so you've got to like that about your team that when it's time to close out a game, even when you're not at your best, you've got to find a way to win some of those, and we did and against a very determined Detroit team."