The Backcheck: Lightning roll past red-hot Kraken

"We played a pretty complete game, to be honest."
Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper was pleased with his team's performance on Monday afternoon as the Bolts skated to a fourth-straight win with a 4-1 victory over the Seattle Kraken at Climate Pledge Arena.

"I didn't feel like we were in a ton of trouble all night," Cooper said. "They're a good hockey team, so they're going to get some chances, but I thought we limited them pretty well."
Having a strong start is one of the most important aspects of playing on the road and Tampa Bay came out flying on Monday afternoon, outshooting Seattle 15-6 in the opening 20 minutes. As it looked like the Bolts were going to head into the first intermission with nothing to show for the strong start on the scoreboard, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare came through with his second goal of the season with 1:17 remaining in the first period.
After Corey Perry won a race to a loose puck in the Kraken zone, he sent a pass to the point for Ian Cole, who ripped a heavy slap shot toward the goal that Bellemare redirected past Philipp Grubauer to put the Lightning up by one.

"The thought process is to make sure my stick is in play," said Bellemare. "Make sure it's somewhere there, so that I can have the shortest time going down or up in case I can tip it.
"That shot was kind of in the perfect range. Sometimes when it's really close, it's a little bit tougher. I am not that good. There are a bunch of better players in the league, but I am not that good at doing that. But this was kind of the perfect distance from my body to be able to tip it."
Seattle entered Monday's contest riding an eight-game winning streak, so it wasn't surprising to see a big push from the Kraken to start the second period. But the Bolts did a good job limiting Seattle's high-danger chances and held the Kraken to just six shots on goal for the second-straight period to maintain the 1-0 lead heading into the final 20 minutes.
After Vince Dunn overskated a puck behind the Seattle net in the third period, Nick Paul quickly gained possession and ripped a quick wrister over the glove of Grubauer and into the back of the net for his 16th goal of the season with 13:16 remaining in regulation to put Tampa Bay up 2-0.
Signed to a seven-year contract extension this summer, Paul has lit the lamp on a consistent basis for the Lightning all season and currently ranks fifth on the team in goals. The big forward set a new career high with 16 goals in 80 games between Ottawa and Tampa Bay last season. It took Paul just 42 games to hit that mark this year as it looks like he's on his way to the first 20-goal season of his career.
"They pushed, to be expected, but we weathered it and Pauly's second goal was a big one for us," said Cooper. "It was a tight-checking game. Special teams wasn't a big factor. It was just two pretty good teams going at it."
Cooper and his staff have wanted to see better third periods from the Bolts during this road trip and Paul's goal presented a big opportunity to play sound defensively and close the game out, something the Lightning have been excellent at over the past several years.

"It's all about managing the game and we didn't need another one," Cooper said. "We just needed to prevent them from getting one. It's not like we sat back, but we were feeling pretty good about our offensive game, at least the possession part of it.
"It's all about, 'Are you adding risk to your game or not?' As we told the guys, we don't need the third one to win. The third one can come on the empty-netter, but let's get us in the position for that to happen and, fortunately for us, it did."
Seattle did get within one at the 10:44 mark of the third, but Tampa Bay got two empty-net goals from Brandon Hagel and Victor Hedman to close out the 4-1 win.
The Lightning continue to place an emphasis on defending their way to wins and they've done that through the first two contests of this season-long, five-game road trip, holding St. Louis and Seattle to three goals combined.
"I think it's been good," said Bolts defenseman Ian Cole when asked about his team's defensive performance. "The season's always a process, even for a team like this that has won so much and had so much success. Every season, you kind of have to start anew, get those reps in, and get everyone on the same page.
"The way we play, it's a five-man, team defense. We really rely on our forwards to do a lot of work for us too and they're so good at it. You've seen the past two games how good they can be and how much they help us as defensemen, and obviously as goaltenders too. They've done a great job for us."
Along with team defense, the Lightning had another strong showing on the penalty kill on Monday, going three-for-three on the PK. The Bolts PK is six-for-seven over the last three contests.

"It's been huge," said Cole. "I think that we had a really good stretch there in December. We let in a couple in January, even though I think that we were doing some pretty good things, but pucks go in.
"That tends to happen when they put their five best players out there and you have four guys. It kind of comes with the territory, but I think we've kind of righted that ship and done a good job with it so far on this road trip.
"Basically, we're trying to keep pucks out of our net to give our power play guys a chance to get out there and go score and be the difference-makers for us. We've just got to keep doing our job and those guys will do their part."
With two of five road games down and four points in the bank, Tampa Bay will now travel to Vancouver to play the Canucks on Wednesday night before taking on the Edmonton Oilers on the second half of a back-to-back set on Thursday.
Going on the road, the Bolts have always aimed to earn as many points as games played. The team is now just one point away from doing that with three games to go. So far, so good. And don't look now, but the Lightning are just two points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for second place in the Atlantic Division with two games in hand and have the fourth-highest points percentage in the NHL at .679.