The Lightning’s longest pause of the season came at a good time for bodies that needed it, even if the calendar still feels a little early for a break.
By the time they face Winnipeg on Thursday night, Tampa Bay will have gone five days since its last game, a Saturday loss in Utah. That’s the longest gap the club has had outside of February’s All-Star break, and it arrived just over three weeks into the season. Not ideal on paper, but after the wear and tear of the last road trip, the time off was useful.
A few days earlier, the Lightning were part of Jon Cooper’s “Coop’s Catch for Kids,” the coach’s fishing event that raised $500,000 this year for pediatric cancer research and patient services. From there, the team crossed the bridge to watch the Rays in Game 3 of the World Series. Then came two hard practice days back at Benchmark International Arena.
That reset mattered for players who were nicked up coming off the road. Forwards Brandon Hagel and Zemgus Girgensons both sat out the last two practices with undisclosed injuries.
Girgensons, who left Saturday’s game early, will not play Thursday. Hagel is a game-time decision, Cooper said.
“If I could have picked this up and made it, like, 10 games later, I would have liked it,” Cooper said after Wednesday’s practice. “But you’ve got to take advantage of these, and I thought we did. ...
I think guys always relish the breaks. There’s no question about that, but there is a rhythm to this season.
I always say it’s practice day, game day, off day, and you get in that flow of things.
The unusual schedule has been a theme for Tampa Bay. The club has had long pauses in New York City, then again in Las Vegas, and now another one in Tampa. That’s left the Lightning with just 11 games played, the second fewest in the Eastern Conference.
“We’ve gotten three of them in a month, and all of a sudden you look at the standings and we’ve almost played the least amount of games. So it is going to catch up to us. But it will be good to get into a rhythm,” Cooper said.
That rhythm is about to get real. Thursday’s matchup with the Jets begins a stretch of 15 games in 31 days that runs beyond Thanksgiving.
The Lightning’s last road trip also left a mark on the defensive side. After allowing only 2.5 goals per game over their first nine, they gave up 11 in back-to-back losses at Colorado and Utah.
“We’ve got to clean that up, and I think if you had to point a finger at something it was costly turnovers that hurt us,” Lightning assistant Rob Zettler said. “And that’s been a little bit of a(n) Achilles heel in the past.
And we did clean it up a little bit beginning the season, but it kind of reared its ugly head over the road trip here. So we’ve got to find a way to make that not happen anymore.”
There was also some encouraging news on Yanni Gourde. The center, still working back from June hip surgery and initially expected to return in December, is now a full participant in practice. With Hagel out Wednesday, Gourde skated in a top-six spot alongside Anthony Cirelli and Jake Guentzel.
“Honestly, there’s great days and there’s days where I’m like, don’t go too fast,” Gourde said. “But it’s part of it.
It’s part of the ups and downs of a rehab and coming back from this type of surgery. But I’m pushing every day to try to get back out there.”
Gourde also had a turn in a very different spotlight before the Rays’ American League Championship Series opener against Cleveland at Tropicana Field, serving as a pregame hype man. He said that made him more nervous than the Stanley Cup Final.
“I was way more nervous, and I don’t know why,” Gourde said. “I just think it’s having a mic in my hand.
This is not what I do, but it was fun. ... It was unreal but very, very stressful to go out there in front of that many people and pump up the crowd.”
The team’s off-ice work continued after Wednesday’s practice, when Ryan McDonagh and Victor Hedman visited the pediatric unit at Tampa General Hospital for a pre-Halloween appearance. McDonagh wore a Superman costume, while Hedman dressed as a fighter jet pilot. They spent time with patients and families, signed autographs and stopped by the family lounge at TGH Muma Children’s Hospital, which Cooper helped create through the money raised by “Coop’s Catch.”
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