With five games left in the National Hockey League season, the Tampa Bay Lightning are in elite company. In fact, they have a chance to gather the most wins of any hockey team in a single season. Ever.
As fans scour the Bolts’ remaining schedule in hopes of their team becoming the ultimate hockey powerhouse, Tampa Bay continues to pile up point after point. There’s a reason. This group is as deep as the deficit their opponents face in the standings, with a 19-point lead on the closest team through 77 games. However, whether or not Tampa pulls four of five to capture history, this is the greatest team ever to hit the ice.
Puck Retrieval
While the stat that jumps out most for the Lightning is a ridiculous 3.90 goal per game average, that actually pales in comparison to the current win leader, the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings, who piled up an unconscious 3.96. Keep in mind, however, that this is a fairly slim margin for a team constructed before the salary cap era.
What stands out about this Bolts squad is their ferocity on the puck. That was evident in their frantic 5-4 comeback win over the Boston Bruins March 25. Late in the game, the league’s leading scorer, Nikita Kucherov, made an incredible play in the offensive zone to strip the puck from a Bruin primed to burst the other way into a dangerous scoring position. Not only did Kucherov thieve the puck, he somehow managed to keep it in the zone.
While the Lightning didn’t score on the following sequence, this play was one of countless examples of the Bolts’ intensity on the forecheck in that game, and aided them in continuing to dominate time of possession late, and eventually break Tuukka Rask for their third goal of the period and the win.
Tampa Bay’s Corsi-for percentage 5-on-5 is 52%, meaning more often than not, the puck is on a Lightning stick. While Corsi wasn’t tracked in the days of the Red Wings’ record-setting year, it’s hard to imagine Detroit ranking higher, or simply being as aggressive and successful in turning pucks over.
Snipers
It’s no secret the Bolts can score. What might not be aptly recognized is they do so at a higher rate than the winningest franchise in NHL history, in terms of goals-for/against per game. Tampa Bay’s 6.56 TG/G (Total goals per game) blows the Wings’ 6.16 out of the water.
Detroit’s 6.16 is also actually less than the league average that season of 6.29, in a higher scoring era of the NHL. Tampa Bay’s 6.56 meanwhile, is absolutely ridiculous. It makes the league average look like a pewee team, sitting at 5.97. That means the Bolts score over half a goal more than the rest of their competition on a nightly basis, while the Wings’ total actually paled in competition to ’95-96 counterparts.
That’s most likely a result of Tampa Bay possessing two players with 40+ goals as of the 77 game-mark, and Kucherov nearing in with 38. To put that in perspective, in an era with an abundance of scoring, Detroit had zero, with Sergei Fedorov being the closest at 39. At the rate 86 is going, it almost seems like a given Tampa will end up with three, which is an amazing testament to their depth in players who can flat out bury.
Special Teams
While Detroit takes the cake in terms of penalty kill percentage, it’s by a narrow three percent margin. They boast a 88.27% PK percentage, to Tampa’s 85.32% and hold a slightly bigger edge on the league average than Tampa Bay, but nothing to the likes of the Lightning’s edge in scoring.
Speaking of scoring, Tampa does quite a lot of it on the man-advantage. The Bolts are superior in power play percentage, holding a 28.46%. The Wings were 21.32%. It’s arguable that the man-advantage is more important to a team that dominates by simply out-scoring the opposition, which is the Lightning’s MO. Their penalty kill is also much improved from an atrocious showing in the regular season last year.
Again, while the Wings edge the Lightning in penalty kill by a narrow margin, the power play isn’t even close. That’s a common theme when comparing the Bolts’ power play to every other power play this season. Detroit was just 3.39% above the league average, and the Bolts’ power play has scorched opponents at an unconscious rate. They’re 8.62% above the league average in power play percentage.
Save Percentage
It’s hard to believe that the Lightning come out on top in this category, considering Louis Domingue has played 26 games due to Andrei Vasilevskiy’s injury in November.
The Wings bested NHL competition with a 0.013 window, but it’s mind-blowingly close. Tampa Bay holds a 0.012 advantage. No knock on Domingue, but the Lightning beating the Wings with a .917 team save percentage compared to Detroit’s .909 is very impressive.
Possibly besting them in league competition with five games still to play and a very thin margin speaks volumes, especially considering their backup goaltender played a large portion of the schedule. Chris Osgood played 50 games for the Red Wings that season, but this was in an era where goaltender-by-committee during the regular season was more common. That is, before it was more common to see starters near in on the seventy-game mark.
By Position
The Lightning’s forward group is just slightly better. They currently have 14 players above the ledger line in plus minus to an extremely deep Detroit team’s 13. The Red Wings have 11 players in double-digit goal totals to the Lightning’s ten, and judging from the injury report, Ondrej Palat won’t make it there. Again, though, this was in an era with inflated scoring. Surprisingly enough though, Detroit’s 325 total goals isn’t out of Tampa Bay’s reach. It’s a massive stretch, but regardless, Tampa Bay’s 300 with five games remaining is an extremely impressive total in a more defensive time in the NHL.
It’s difficult to make a case for the Lightning defensively, considering the Red Wings have more positively-rated players on their blue line, more who turn defense into offense, and less goals against. Yet, it’s important to remember that 205 goals against is a quality number with five games left nowadays, and still destroys the league average. Detroit, however, did so to a greater degree.
Tampa Bay’s goaltending has been a staple this season, and looks primed to finish ahead of the Wings. Regardless, the way Louis Domingue stepped up to keep those digits afloat gave the Lightning a boost numbers can’t measure.
That’s two out of three positions to the Bolts, and a constant edge in in-depth statistics throughout.
It Aint’ Over Yet
With five games remaining, it’s not only achievable for Tampa to best Detroit in all time wins, but also tie the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens in total points (80 games played) with 132. Granted, they’d have to win out against a relatively stiff schedule. If they can pull it off though, they’d record the most wins and most points in league history. That speaks for itself.
Whether the Bolts further shatter the record books or not, their torrid season stacks up magnificently with one of the most dominant franchises the NHL has ever seen. So as the playoffs begin, sit back and enjoy, Bolts fans. This team is a sight to behold.
