Welcome to the future. For the Tampa Bay Lightning, this is the image of hockey as it will be in those tense, terrific days ahead.
It is 2015, late April, and the team will be a little desperate. The opposition will have them outnumbered and outgunned. The arena will not have enough oxygen. The lead will feel microscopic. The goaltender will bounce this way and that to keep the puck on the proper side of him.
It was that way for the Lightning Saturday night against Minnesota.
It will be that way in the months to come, too.
More than anything else, that was the feeling the Lightning gave off in those final wild moments against the Minnesota Wild. Trouble was at the door, and somehow, Tampa Bay turned it away. A game could have slipped away, and somehow, the Lightning held on.
Maybe it will mean something, and maybe it will not. But for the Lightning, Saturday night’s 2-1 victory over Minnesota was a preview of the stretch drive to come. It is silly to suggest that mid-November is a time that a team needs to win, but this was, well, a time the Lightning needed to win.
And they did.
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