Defence-first mindset propelling red-hot Lighting amid eight-game win streak

WASHINGTON (AP) — Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day and the entire 4 Nations Face-Off tournament have all come and gone since the Tampa Bay Lightning last lost a hockey game.

No one has defeated them in regulation since January.

Coach Jon Cooper’s team is the hottest in the NHL, riding an eight-game winning streak and outscoring opponents 34-13 over the past month. The run of dominance from elite goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy in net out to everyone else has put the rest of the league on notice that the Lightning — now four years removed from the second of their back-to-back Stanley Cup championships — have all the makings of a group that can make another deep playoff run this spring.

“A lot of people think of the Tampa Bay Lightning as scoring a bunch of goals, but we’re doing it with defence,” Cooper said Saturday after beating the Washington Capitals 3-1. “If we want to have any chance of winning — A, getting in and B, winning — we’re going to have to play like this.”

Vasilevskiy, the 2019 Vezina Trophy winner as the top player at the position and 2021 playoff MVP, has been a big part of it, starting and winning all eight games with a goals-against average of 1.63 and a save percentage of .945 that is higher than either of his two Cup runs.

Forward Mitchell Chaffee deadpanned, “Having the best goalie in the world is so easy to play in front of.”

And, with no disrespect to “Vasy,” Tampa Bay’s skaters are playing such a lockdown, tight-checking style that not a lot of pucks are getting to him in the form of quality scoring chances.

“Defence wins championships,” captain and 2020 playoff MVP Victor Hedman said. “We’ve done a good job of kind of keeping it a little bit easier for him. He makes those 10-bellers when we need him, but I think just as a collective we’ve been really good in our own end and keeping the other team to the outside. That’s why we’re getting our looks offensively, as well, and we’ve been able to bury some pucks.”

The puck is certainly going in.

Brandon Hagel, who along with Cooper, Brayden Point and Anthony Cirelli won the 4 Nations with Canada, has points in all eight games with eight goals and six assists. Nikita Kucherov, the ’23-24 MVP runner-up who won the Hart Trophy in 2019, is on a 10-game scoring streak.

“It’s rare that he’s held a night off the scoresheet,” Cooper said. “He knows how to play on the power play, he knows how to play 5 on 5 and right now he’s playing a 200-foot game, which I think is really helping.”

The whole team is. Tampa Bay’s most recent victory at Washington would have been a shutout if not for Alex Ovechkin putting a perfectly screened shot past Vasilevskiy for the 884th goal of his career to move 10 back of tying Wayne Gretzky’s record.

“Obviously Vasy is one of the top goalies in the league and it’s hard to score against him when he sees the puck,” Ovechkin said. “I don’t know how many blocked shots they had.”

They had 19 to make it 125 over this streak, which began Feb. 4 when they beat Ottawa. The bumps and bruises have been well-earned.

“We’ve got guys blocking shots, committed to being on the right side of the puck and it’s fun to be a part of,” said veteran defenceman Ryan McDonagh, a two-time Cup champion who’s tied for the league lead in plus-minus at plus-35 in his first season back with Tampa Bay after two years playing for Nashville. “You have to be able to defend. It’s a key. It’s a huge part of any kind of deep run that you have, and right now we’ve got the buy-in.”

That buy-in up and down the lineup, Hedman said, has made the Lightning comfortable in 1-0 games. And Cooper pointed out that getting leads has allowed them to control play and not chase desperately to tie the score.

They are also not blowing leads and losing as they did in spurts earlier this season.

“We’re playing a much simpler game,” Cooper said. “They’re getting breaks, you’re getting a save and you’re getting a goal at the right time and earlier in the year that wasn’t a combination that was always happening. But it’s happening now, and we’re taking advantage of it.”

There’s still a quarter of the season left to play, but if the Lightning are able to replicate this success come playoff time, the Stanley Cup might as well stay in Florida another year after their chief rival Panthers won it last year.

“(You can’t get) comfortable because that can change quick and, obviously, everyone in the East continues to win,” Hagel said. “There’s still no time to take a step back.”