What we're watching as the Lightning open training camp

The back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning hit the ice Thursday for the opening day of training camp in their quest to become the first NHL team to three-peat since the New York Islanders won four straight from 1980 to 1983.
The Lightning became one of the league's special teams last season when they won their second-consecutive Stanley Cup. Now, they have the opportunity to join rarified air, to become one of just four franchises in league history to win three Cups in a row, joining the Islanders, Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs.

"You look at how many teams have strung together three in a row in the 100-plus years in this league and there's not many," Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. "And when you do see that list of those teams, it's when there weren't that many teams in the league. In a salary cap era, and I applaud the Pittsburgh Penguins for doing it a few years ago before that to get two and you applaud the Tampa Bay Lightning for getting two but who's done three? Not even some of the greatest teams ever assembled. The Edmonton Oilers, they've got five Cups and they never strung three together. And so, it is rare to be able to do that. Not too many teams get the chance to do it, and we have the chance to do it."
The Lightning bring back the core of the team that won the last two Stanley Cups but have holes to fill elsewhere as the offseason salary cap crunch saw the departure of some important, popular players.
As the Bolts train over the next three weeks in preparation for the season opener October 12 versus Pittsburgh, here are the three main questions we're asking with the opening of camp.

Why are the Lightning still a Stanley Cup favorite?
Alex Killorn was posed this question during the premiere of the Tampa Bay Lightning 2021 championship film at Tampa Theatre on Saturday, and his answer is as good as any.
"I think as long as you have 88 between the pipes, you always have a chance," he said to the crowd's approval.
Much has been made about what the Lightning lost this offseason due to salary cap constraints and the Seattle expansion draft.
But let's remember who the Lightning still have.
The top line of Ondrej Palat, Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov is intact. Point signed an eight-year contract extension starting with the 2022-23 season, tying him to the Lightning through 2029-30. Kucherov enters this year healthy after missing all of the 2020-21 regular season due to offseason hip surgery.
The second line is coming back too. Alex Killorn, Anthony Cirelli and Steven Stamkos combined last year to give the Bolts two dynamic, dependable, game-changing lines at the top end of their forward group.
The number one power-play unit of Victor Hedman, Stamkos, Point, Kucherov and Killorn returns. That combination helped the Lightning to a 32.4 percent power-play success rate in the postseason, tops among teams making it to the final four.
The defense is basically the same as it was a year ago, except swap out David Savard for Zach Bogosian, a known commodity who helped the Lightning win the first of their back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020. Expect the defenseman pairings to remain similar too with Hedman and Jan Rutta partnering together, Ryan McDonagh and Erik Cernak forming the Bolts' shutdown duo and Mikhail Sergachev and Bogosian giving the Lightning arguably the strongest third pair in the NHL.
With Andrei Vasilevskiy in goal, as Killorn stated, Tampa Bay is a favorite to win any matchup. The Lightning know they have the best goalie. The rest of the hockey world found out following his performances over the last two postseasons, including a NHL record five-straight shutouts in series-clinching wins going back to the 2020 Cup Final versus Dallas.
Plus, there's that whole thing about championship pedigree.
The Lightning have it and then some. Bet against them at your own peril.

How do you replace the third line?
Short answer: you can't.
There's a reason the line of Barclay Goodrow, Yanni Gourde and Blake Coleman started pretty much every game and every period for the Lightning throughout their two Stanley Cup runs. That trio set the tone for the rest of the team with their tenacity and their relentlessness and the way they harassed opponents into mistakes and then were able to take advantage of them.
Every team in the NHL has at least one standout line and most have two. When you get into the postseason, sometimes those top lines cancel each other out. That's where you need your depth to shine through, and that's exactly what the Gourde line did.
All three of those players are gone this season though.
Gourde was selected by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft. The Lightning got tremendous value over two playoff runs for the severely underpaid Coleman and Goodrow. As unrestricted free agents this offseason, both are making considerably more money with new teams because the Lightning's cap situation didn't allow them to pay the two what they could command on the open market.
So Tampa Bay will have to find new players during training camp who can step into their spot and continue to give the Bolts a dynamic third line.
The opening day of training camp provided perhaps a peak into how the coaching staff plans to replace the Gourde line. Ross Colton, who scored the Cup-clinching goal in Game 5 of the 2021 Stanley Cup Final versus Montreal, centered what looked to be a potential third line with Mathieu Joseph on his left and newcomer Corey Perry to his right.
Tampa Bay's first two lines from last season - Ondrej Palat, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Alex Killorn, Anthony Cirelli, Steven Stamkos - remain the same. Patrick Maroon will likely anchor the fourth line again this season with Pierre-Edouard Bellemare slotting in at center and either a young player like Taylor Raddysh, Boris Katchouk or Alex Barre-Boulet filling the right wing role. Or maybe Perry slides down to that group to give the Bolts potentially the grittiest fourth line in the league.
How the third and fourth lines work themselves out is likely a fluid situation and one that might take longer than training camp to answer.
But it's an answer the Lightning will need nonetheless.
"There's no Barclay Goodrow or Yanni Gourde or Blake Coleman or David Savard or Tyler Johnson," Cooper said. "They were all players. They made their way to the NHL and had success and now are reaping the benefits of that. There's a new group of players that are going to do the exact same thing, they're just going to do it in a different way. There's guy that have been waiting for a chance like this, and we're excited to have these guys. And then you mix in some of the savvy vets that we've brought in here that we're really excited to, just watching that scrimmage today, I like this mix that we have right here. But having some turnover on a team is not a bad thing. I'll never forget what that group of players did for two years, but our core's still intact and we're surrounding them with some hungry, hungry players. It's just going to be different. We're looking for the same result, we're just going to have to do it in different ways

Who will kill penalties?
With Gourde, Goodrow and Coleman no longer on the roster, the Lightning have some work to do identifying their penalty-killing duos, particularly among the forward group.
The back end of the penalty kill should be fine. The Lightning return five of their top six defensemen for average penalty kill time on ice from the 2020-21 regular season. The only player not back is David Savard, who can be replaced by Zach Bogosian, who was fourth among Bolts defensemen for average penalty kill ice time during his brief regular season stint with the team in 2019-20.
Up front is where the Lightning are going to need to find some replacements.
The duo of Coleman and Goodrow was a big reason the Lightning had an 84.1 percent kill rate in the postseason, fourth best among all playoff teams and second best among teams advancing to the final four.
Goodrow (2:26), Coleman (2:13) and Gourde (1:29) accounted for three of Tampa Bay's top five forward penalty killers in terms of average penalty kill time on ice per game.
The Lightning will likely lean heavily on Alex Killorn (2:02) and Anthony Cirelli (1:49) this season. Those two have killed penalties together for a couple seasons now and have great chemistry.
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare was third among Colorado forwards last season for penalty kill TOI and was brought to Tampa Bay as a free agent this offseason to help in that area for the Lightning.
"Bellemare, we haven't played a ton against him, he's always been in a lot of different divisions. Just talking to guys, he's a great guy," Killorn said. "Defensively, on the PK, he's going to help us out a lot. When you look at Yanni Gourde and Coleman and Goodrow, that's three PK guys right there. We're going to need him to help out in that sense."
Expect to see Ondrej Palat used more on the penalty kill. When Goodrow suffered an injury at the end of the regular season and couldn't start the First Round series against Florida, Palat was one of the players the Lightning looked at to replace him.
Mathieu Joseph and Ross Colton didn't figure much on special teams last year but getting in on the penalty kill could be a way for them to increase their role. Colton has the tenacity to replace Gourde. Joseph's speed could be a dangerous weapon in shorthanded breakaway situations.
But identifying forward depth beyond Killorn, Cirelli and Bellemare on the penalty kill will be a major point of emphasis during training camp.