During the regular season, there can be a circumstantial edge for one team on a given night, based on travel and back-to-backs. In the playoffs, those advantages/disadvantages disappear since the two teams share the same schedule. During a two-week regular season span, a team might play seven games versus seven different opponents. In the playoffs, those seven games are contested between the same two clubs. Postseason hockey is more intense and the games are pressure-packed.
The Lightning have allowed more goals this regular season than any other during Jon Cooper's 10-year tenure as head coach. Their GA/G average finished 3.07, their highest number since the 2011-2012 regular season. Even accounting for the fact that scoring has increased over the last couple of years, the Lightning were leakier defensively - relative to other teams - than usual. They ranked tied for 14th in team defense, their lowest finish since they were 16th in the 2016-17 season (Cooper's only full season in which the Lightning missed the playoffs).
Following their sweep at the hands of Columbus in the 2019 First Round, the Lightning became a better defensive team. At Cooper's urging, they took some of the risk out of their game and didn't sacrifice defense for offense. The shift was noticeable during the 2019-20 regular season and helped them immensely once the 2020 playoffs began in the Toronto bubble. Their stout defensive play in the last three postseasons has been a big reason why they've won two Stanley Cups and reached three consecutive Finals.
Their defensive issues this year seem to be less systemic than they were prior to 2019-20. Instead, they appear to be tied to the grind of a regular season in which the Lightning's playoff positioning was secure. So in many games - especially late in the regular season - some of their attention to detail was absent. Prior to the All-Star Break, the Lightning allowed seven goals in a game one time (and in that contest, they surrendered two empty-net goals). It happened on four occasions after the Break.
Still, when the Lightning did play with attention to detail, their defensive numbers were good-to-outstanding. Look at their final eight games of the regular season, in which they went 4-4-0. In the four losses, they allowed a staggering 23 goals. In their four victories, they yielded one.
So we return to the question posed at the beginning of this column: how much can we read into regular season numbers once the playoffs begin?
For the Lightning, they have shown themselves capable of defending much better than what their final regular season numbers tell us. They'll need to reach and maintain that lofty standard in this upcoming series against Toronto, a team loaded with dangerous offensive players up and down the lineup.
