Lightning look to build on home momentum with pre-holiday road trip

TAMPA — Minutes after capping off a successful homestand, winning five of six games at Amalie Arena following a 4-1 victory over Columbus on Thursday night, the Lightning already were mentally moving on to the next challenge on their schedule.

“It’s yesterday’s news though already,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said at the postgame podium.

The Lightning have spent most of the past six weeks — 15 of their last 20 games — at home, going an impressive 14-5-1 over that stretch.

And their upcoming four-game road trip is entirely against division opponents, which makes getting two points doubly important. They open the stretch Saturday night in Montreal, continue with back-to-back games in Toronto and Detroit on Tuesday and Wednesday and end in Buffalo on Friday before going into a three-day Christmas break.

“Nobody’s really separated themselves other than Boston and Toronto,” Cooper said. “They have kind of taken off with it. But we’re kind of climbing our way back into the conversation with those teams. But those other teams are right behind us and Detroit beat us here and Buffalo, we found ourselves fortunate to beat them. Haven’t seen Montreal yet and Toronto was an overtime game. So it’s always rivalries when we come in to play these teams, so it’s going to be a good test for us.”

Instead of clinging to one of the two wild-card playoff spots, the Lightning have climbed into the top three of the Atlantic Division, within striking distance of Boston and Toronto. The Lightning (19-9-1, 37 points) entered Friday’s games sitting in third place in the Atlantic, trailing second-place Toronto by five points, but seven points ahead of Detroit and Florida.

“It’s early in the season, so there’s a lot of hockey to play,” Lightning forward Brandon Hagel said. “But of course, you always want to be in that playoff spot and always want to be in the running, so of course everyone’s gonna take a peek at standings.”

More important than their record to the process-driven Lightning is that they have cleaned up the major hole in their game and showed more detail in playing defense in their own end. Because of that, they have held opponents to two goals or fewer in each of the past four games and eight of their last 13.

Take away a three-goal third period in their home loss to Detroit on Dec. 6 and the Lightning have played well defensively period-to-period, limiting high-danger scoring chances by avoiding turnovers that lead to odd-man rushes and protecting the middle of the ice in their own end.

“Maybe toward the middle of that stand, we started to be better in the middle right in front of our goaltender and I think that’s what’s made it so it is less goals against,” Lightning center Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. “This is an area we strive to be better and we have to be better and I think this team has been known to be really good in that area for the past years.”

The Lightning went into Thursday’s win over Columbus tied at 1 entering the third period. They had allowed the Blue Jackets to dominate in zone time in the second period, but they were keeping Columbus to the perimeter, away from the Grade-A chances in front of the net. Eventually, talent took over, and the Lightning’s top scoring line had three goals in the final period for the win.

“We protected all the scoring areas,” Cooper said. “When you start letting teams go east-west on you, it’s going to be trouble. You start giving them all those Grade-A opportunities in the slot. You just can’t do it. And so you’re trying to keep teams to the outside. We had some big-time players make some plays. But that’s we have to do, you have to take all those juicy scoring areas away and if they beat you from the outside, they beat you from outside and I think we’ve done a better job of that.”

It will be important for the Lightning to continue that trend on this road trip, especially against high-scoring teams that bury their chances in front like Toronto and Buffalo. The Maple Leafs and Sabres rank second and fifth in goals scored off high-danger scoring opportunities, with 60 and 55 goals in those situations, respectively.

Note: Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, who missed Thursday’s game with an upper-body injury after taking a shot off his hand late in Tuesday’s game against Florida, is traveling with the team. He is considered day-to-day, but it remains unclear whether he will play in Montreal on Saturday. Forward Rudolfs Balcers, who is on injured reserve and has missed the past nine games with a shoulder injury, is also traveling with the team so there is optimism that he could become available over the next week.

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