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I guess you just never know what the Lightning are going to do from year to year or game to game, which tends to be what happens when you have elite talent perched on a house of cards. Unlike the Panthers, the Bolts have serious weapons on their top line (though Ryan Malone is clearly the Shemp of that trio), so the Hawks are going to have to muster more than their thus-far-customary two goals. Perhaps three! Perhaps even four! Bishop has generally stood tall this year, pun intended, with only one or two goals allowed in his five wins, but Boston got him with four on Saturday night and knocked him out of the game before the end of the second. Khabibulin hasn't played since the game against Long Island, so he's due for a start to spell Crawford a bit, but he'll be challenged quite a bit more than he was in his first/only game of the year. Speaking of the Boston blowout, the Bolts haven't played since then, so that's four days of rest against one for the Hawks, who are on a themed vacation with only nominal responsibilities, kind of like when we went on our high school band trip to Disney World and had to do some phony-baloney concert in front of no one whatsoever and then get back to important things like going on waterslides all day and trying to fingerbang girls on coach buses under cover of night (many others succeeded where I failed).
With Nordstrom assigned, Kostka injured, and Rozsival sick (old-itis?), the Hawks are carrying zero healthy scratches. If Kostka goes to IR (and with an expected recovery time of six weeks, why wouldn't he?), the Hawks are down to twelve forwards and seven defensemen, with Brookbank not quite adequate at filling in on a fourth-line wing the way we were told Kostka would be when he was kept up over Ryan Stanton. Stanton couldn't clear waivers and was claimed by Vancouver. This may have been a boo-boo. Anyway, I would guess Jeremy Morin (who just scored a game-winner against the Marlies) gets the call once the Hawks are back home on Saturday. Or maybe Dylan Olsen or Adam Clendening.
Expected Tampa lineup:
Ryan Malone - Steven Stamkos - Martin St. Louis
Alex Killorn - Valtteri Flippula - Richard Panik
Ondrej Palat - Tyler Johnson - Teddy Purcell
P.C. LaBrie - Nate Thompson - Brandon Crombeen
Matt Carle - Radko Gudas
Viktor Hedman - Sami Salo
Eric Brewer - Andrej Sustr (schuster)
Ben Bishop (5-1-0, 145/157 over 341:25, 2.11 GAA, .924 sv%)
Hawks:
Saad - Toews - Hossa
Sharp - Handzus - Kane
Bickell - Kruger - Shaw
Bollig - Pirri - Smith
Coasting on Reputation
Hjalmarsson - Oduya
Leddy - Brookbank
Khabibulin (1-0-0, 17/19 over 60:00, 2.00 GAA, .895 sv%, realize of course this is meaningless)
RECORDS
Hawks: 6-1-2, adjusted 4-1-4, 11.247 points expected
Bolts: 5-3-0, adjusted 4-3-1, 9.505 points expected
GOALS
Hawks: 2.667 scored (16th), 2.111 allowed (5th)
Bolts: 3.125 scored (8th) 2.625 allowed (14th)
UNEVEN STRENGTH
Hawks PP: 7/32, 21.9% (9th) over 51:30 (19th) and 32 opportunities (21st)
Bolts PP: 7/33, 21.2% (13th) over 51:01 (21st) and 33 opportunities (18th)
Hawks PK: 20/27, 74.1% (28th) over 38:38 (3rd) and 27 times shorthanded (5th)
Bolts PK: 26/33, 78.8% (20th), over 54:43 (16th) and 33 times shorthanded (15th)
win would be nice but I dunno about this one...
_________________ Molly Lambert wrote: The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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