How the Lightning can score goals against Columbus

Through two games, the Tampa Bay Lightning have had no problem generating shots in their First Round playoff series versus Columbus.

The Lightning are averaging 62.5 shots per game against the Blue Jackets. That number is skewed obviously by the Bolts' NHL playoff record 88 shots in a quintuple overtime Game 1 victory.

But Tampa Bay followed that gaudy Game 1 shot volume with a 37-shot effort in Game 2. The Lightning have had no issues getting pucks to the net of Columbus goaltender Joonas Korpisalo.

It's what they're doing once those pucks get to the net where the Lightning are falling short.

Second- and third-chance opportunities have been difficult to come by against a Columbus team that places a premium on packing the front of its own net tightly. The rebounds have been there for the Lightning too. They scored two of their three goals in Game 1 off of scramble plays at the goal mouth set up by rebounds. Nikita Kucherov's goal in Game 2, the lone goal for the Bolts in their 3-1 loss, was scored after he took the rebound from Ondrej Palat's open shot from the slot that missed the net high but caromed off the back wall for Kucherov to bank off the back of Korpisalo and in the net.

The Bolts just aren't getting to those rebounds as much as they'd like because the Blue Jackets are getting to them first and clearing them from danger.

"We're putting up a ton of shots right now…We've just got to be a little more violent with our arrivals at the net and I think and not forcing plays and not getting frustrated," Lightning forward Blake Coleman said. "We've just got to understand it might be a low-scoring series and you might have to win games 2-1 and that's just the way things are going to be. Most importantly, just staying the course and not getting frustrated when we're not scoring three, four, five goals a game. Just understanding that our attention to detail defensively is going to be much more important in this series."

Patrick Maroon suggested Tampa Bay's forward group can do a better job of taking away the eyes of Korpisalo. The Columbus netminder is a playoff neophyte having played just five postseason games, all coming this season. So far, the Lightning have made it too easy on Korpisalo by allowing him to track every puck that comes his way.

Get him uncomfortable and make it tough for him to see pucks and maybe the Lightning can start to rattle Korpisalo.

"Once you get in his eyes, he's going to be fighting the puck," Maroon said. "And then that's when your second and third opportunities come."

Continually playing low-scoring games in the postseason can be frustrating for a Tampa Bay team used to scoring plenty of goals during the regular season. The Lightning led the NHL for goals per game in 2019-20, netting 3.47 per game. The Bolts in fact have paced the League for goals a game each of the last three seasons.

This postseason has been a different story, however. The Lightning have yet to score more than three goals in any game in the 2020 Playoffs and rank 18th out of the 24 playoff teams for average postseason goals (2 per game). In their six playoff games against Columbus last postseason and this one, they've yet to score more than three goals in any contest.

It hasn't all been outstanding opposing goaltending or failing to get inside to produce the greasy goals you need to win in the postseason that's kept the Lightning from lighting the lamp against Columbus either.

Sometimes it's bad luck too.

Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper pointed to a play in Game 2 where Mikhail Sergachev had a shot wired for the back of the net but it ended up hitting the butt of Barclay Goodrow, who the coach pointed out was absolutely where he was supposed to be on the scoring opportunity.

"At some point they're going to go," Cooper said. "It's just you keep getting chances, you keep putting pucks there and you are getting the bounces, the pucks will have eyes for you. But you have to get inside on them because if you're not creating havoc in there, it's just going to be too easy for them."

Maroon is the only player on the Lightning who has won a Stanley Cup, that coming last season with his hometown St. Louis Blues. He's seen the ups and downs of a playoff series, scoring droughts, flurries of scoring, bad calls, everything that can test a team's mental fortitude.

He said the way the Lightning can work their way out of their scoring slump and overcome their Game 2 loss is to just move on. Forget about what happened in the past, concentrate on the next game.

If you dwell on the past, that's when you're liable to lose focus in the game, and Columbus has proven so far in the series its ready to pounce on any little mistake the Lightning make.

"We went through an emotional game with the five-overtime game and then we come back and Columbus is a hard team and they're going to continue to play hard and they don't really get out of their structure at all and they're going to continue to just play the right way and kind of wait until our mental mistakes," Maroon said. "We've got to stay the course and stay what we have to keep doing. We're going to go through a bunch of stuff. We've just got to stay the course, stay the task and focus on our team."