What Went Wrong: Detroit, San Jose
Their defense was still bad, but their goaltending situation was largely tolerable. Thomas Greiss finished with an 8-15-8 record with the Red Wings, but that was in part because of a lack of offensive support. In starts where he allowed two or fewer goals, he had a 5-5-4 record. Think about that for a moment. Games where your goaltender holds the competition should be consistent wins. Sometimes there’s going to be a goaltending battle that you end up on the unlucky end of, but certainly when a netminder finishes a campaign with a mediocre-to-bad record in games where he allowed two or fewer goals, that speaks volumes about the lack of support he got.
So far starters, this article completely ignores that Greiss was objectively terrible earlier in the season and started playing better later in the season. Later, they say that Hronek “continued to establish himself as a genuine top pairing option.” No, he didn’t.
But choices for this section are limited because so much local content is now paywalled, so we’ll get by with what we have.
Lightning look to ‘clear our heads’ heading into Game 5 against Islanders
“This is a day we can clear our heads, get away from the rink, get on the plane, enjoy the day, go home with your families and just kind of relax and prepare yourself to be ready for the morning skate on Monday,” Lightning forward Pat Maroon said. “You can take it how you see it. Some players take it differently than other players. For us, I think, this is just get on a plane, relax, clear our heads here and get back to work Monday.”
This series has been better than many expected, and now that it’s a best-of-three, it really feels like it could go either way.