Sunday, 4 a.m.
By this time, the Tampa Bay Lightning are worn out from hearing about last season.
At this rate, they won't have to hear about it much longer.
A year ago, the Bolts lost only 16 games and won 62. This year, they've already lost 12, and they've won just 16. Yeah, it's been disappointing.
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The latest Bolts defeat was a 5-2, backsliding defeat to the Washington Capitals at Amalie Arena.The Bolts were tied 1-1 going into the final period, but Washington pulled away and won easily. Washington scored two goals (by Lars Eller and Garnet Hathaway) in a 45-second span.
“It’s too bad," said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. "We left points out there tonight. ror 40 minutes, we left a lot of plays out there. We played the way we wanted to pay. We dictated a lot of the game.
"We only had one. But we didn’t feel like we were giving up a whole lot. To come out the way we did in the third on two egregious plays. We've kind of gotten away from that. We haven’t been doing that. That was definitely a lack of attention to detail the first three minutes and it cost us. You cant do that against anyone, especially teams of that caliber."
The Lightning lost forward Nikita Kucherov to injury in the second period. Kucherov took a shot off the top of his foot and left the ice. He never returned.
Kucherov leads the team with 34 points on 10 goals and 24 assists this season, including a secondary assist on the Lightning's first goal of the contest, a Brayden Point score 5:45 into the second period.
Despite leading the team, Kucherov is far off pace to reach the career-high numbers he hit last season (41 goals and 87 assists). He is set to net just 27 goals and dish 65 helpers this season. From a teamwide standpoint, Tampa Bay looks much less intimidating so far at 16-12-3 than their record-setting 128 points (62-16-4) last season.
The Lighting's tying goal at 1-1 came from Brayden Point. Jan Rutta also scored for Tampa Bay.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 29 saves. He is now 13-9-1 o the season. He lost just 10 games last season.
The Lightning plays Ottawa on Tuesday night. The puck is scheduled to drop at 7 p.m.