By Gary Shelton, Times Sports Columnist
Saturday, May 14, 2011
BOSTON
It is too soon for the question, of course. The series has just begun. The players have barely begun to open wounds on each other. There is a long way to go.
Still, a game such as this raises the question:
Why can't this Lightning team win it all?
The Lightning won another game Saturday night. In the arena of its greatest torment, against a goaltender who leads the league in induced nightmares, in a series it was never supposed to reach, the Tampa Bay Lightning captured the opening game of the NHL Eastern Conference final.
Tampa Bay 5, Boston 2.
And who is going to stop this team now?
This is no longer a nice little team on a nice little run after a nice little season. It is no longer a plucky bunch of overachievers making up for the years away from the playoffs. This is a contender.
With every series, with every game, with every shift, this team looks more and more legitimate. The Lightning is better now than it was when it swept Washington, and was better against Washington than it was when it came from behind to beat Pittsburgh, and it was better against Pittsburgh than it was at any point in the regular season.
This team gets better every day, and you cannot help but wonder how much better it can become over the next month. With eight straight wins, the Lightning is a powerhouse, a rolling ball of butcher knives, and it has become impossible to tell the great players from the grinders. Suddenly, every stick in the rack is lethal. Suddenly, these players have grown into a mentally fierce, poised unit.
This was supposed to be a difficult game for the Lightning players, remember? There was the eternal layoff, 10 days that seemed like a month. There was the Boston home ice, where Tampa Bay had won only four of 35 games in its history. Most of all, there was Tim Thomas, the goaltender who was supposed to be the Bruins' trump card.
And none of it mattered.
It took 85 seconds, from 11:15 into the game until 12:40, and quick as a sneeze, the Lightning had scored three goals. Lightning players were everywhere. A puck kicks off the skate of Dennis Seidenberg, and Sean Bergenheim, of course, is there to pop it into the net. Brett Clark sweeps down the left side then somehow coaxes a slow putt that Marlo could have stopped. Then Tomas Kaberle fumbles the puck away to Teddy Purcell in front of the net, and Purcell nudges it in.
This is what this Lightning team does. Make a mistake, and someone — anyone — is on the puck like found money.
At this portion of the season, the tempting thing, the trite thing, is to begin to talk about destiny. Fans love to talk about destiny. But that isn't it. You can talk about magic, but that isn't it, either.
What you are seeing is a team that suddenly believes in itself. The confidence of this team, the control, seems to grow, too. There are times it seems outnumbered, and times the other team seems intent on leaving Dwayne Roloson's mask as dimpled as a golf ball. But this team seems to ride through the trouble most of the time, poised as an English professor.
That part is new. At the start of these playoffs, the Lightning lacked the mental focus these games require. It doesn't lack that anymore.
"We've made a lot of progress mentally," coach Guy Boucher said. "When you get to the playoffs, you have to find a whole new level of maturity. That happened in the first series, and we've continued, I think. The thing we do better is reel in our emotions. That's hard to do."
Did you watch the end of the game, when the Bruins tried to punch away their frustration? The Lightning didn't blink. Afterward, it didn't smile. It treats the goals and the fists and the shaky moments as a day at the office. Yes, there is more work to be done.
"The league is looking at head shots," Boucher said of Milan Lucic's sucker-punch of Victor Hedman, "and that was a straight head shot."
Be honest: When the playoffs began, did you know anyone who thought this team was capable of getting so deep? Once, reaching the second round sounded like a lofty expectation.
These days, the Lightning has earned the right to be reconsidered. It has earned a higher level of expectations.
True, this was only one game, Thomas will be better, and the Bruins will be tougher. As for the Lightning, you can expect the phrase "a long way to go" about a billion times between now and Tuesday night's game.
If Boucher has taught the Lightning players nothing else, he has taught them the postseason is a continuing streak of one-game series in which the last shift no longer matters. The matchups aren't anything to worry about, or the odds, or the expectations.
Just the next shift.
Personally, I expect them to win that one, too.