This was the highest scoring NHL season since the mid-90's before the trap took hockey into their dead-puck era. It was the highest scoring 1st Round of the playoffs since the early-90's - and while that led to a reasonable amount of blowouts, it also led to some great games. It was a goals explosion, it was an ecstasy of a first round that resulted in five game 7s.
And then the Lightning swept the Panthers, the highest scoring team since Mario Liemiuex's Penguins, to three goals in four games, choking the life out of them - and we have to ask, and more pointedly worry, if NHL teams will overlook everything right about this season (and of course what is still generally occurring in the Western Conference) and hyper-focus on the fact that the best scoring team got bottled up.
Obviously you can tell by the start that I'm very much on the side that we shouldn't over-react - that defense doesn't automatically own the playoffs (again, look at the damn Avalanche, or the Oilers!), but let's zone out a bit.
First of all, the idea that the Panthers were overrun by some defensive, "lock it down" team, is not true. The Lightning scored the 6th most goals in the NHL this year, and were generally higher ranked in previous years. Left to their devices, the Lightning players would absolutely run and gun - much like they did in their 6-game win over Florida last year. But they also have the ability to switch modes, especially with Brayden Point out for the series, to playing an incredibly detailed, perfect, version of defensive hockey.
The Lightning are just on another level right now at playoff hockey, specifically when they take a lead. Granted, in many ways they were overrun by Florida in Game 4, outshot 49-25, but very few of those were high danger chances. More so in the first three games of the series, they took leads (Game 2 aside) and then proceeded to play perfect defensive playoff hockey. They got to dump-ins first, limited the Panthers to one shot attempt, broke up the Panthers' cycling attempts. They squeezed the life out of the best offensive team we've seen in years.
On the Panthers side, yes Barkov and Huberdeau went silent, and their fringe players fell off similarly. Even if the first round they struggled at times against Washington. This was a disaster from them, but not on approach - as mentioned earlier we have to rewind just one year to see Florida lose to the exact same team despite playing open hockey and playing well offensively for the first five games of the series (the sixth game being the inevitably Vasilevsky shutout of course). They just have to play better, not just play differently.
They didn't take leads to begin with, to even see if they could play decent "playoff" hockey when ahead. Their power-play went through an all-time funk, and put that up to coaching if you want (at the end of the day Andrew Brunette is still a first-year coach) but it is still statistically improbable to ever repeat if they get that many power play chances again. They just seemed outclassed from the start. But for inspiration they can look across the ice at a team that much like them used to be the best offensive team year after year and took a while to win a cup.
But again, they should look at how the Lightning won those cups. The Lightning didn't transform themselves into the 2000s NJ Devils. They were 4th in scoring last year, and scored at a good clip against more "open" teams in the Panthers and Hurricanes in the first two rounds of the playoffs. They were also the highest scoring team in the 2019-20 season, and scored well throughout the playoffs until being somewhat slowed in the Final by the Stars.
The Lightning are experts at playing defensive when they need to be, particularly because their top offensive players are good defensively when needed to. Even guys like Nikita Kucherov have taken it to another level in their back-checking, and of course the amount of shot blocking the Lightning did in that series was unparalleled. But really this is about commitment to what is needed - not necessarily commitment to being defensive.
At the end of the day, the Lightning are a machine. This is now 6 trips to the Eastern Conference Finals in 8 years - of which the last two they converted into Stanley Cup wins. Its 10 straight series. In this period they've beaten the President's Trophy winner twice ('15 Rangers, '22 Panthers), and a team that was on pace for the President's Trophy ('18 Bruins). They've beaten teams that earned (some adjusted for last year's 56-game season) 117 pts ('21 Hurricanes), 115 pts ('21 Panthers), 112 pts ('18 Bruins), 110 pts ('15 Canadiens) in this eight year stretch. There's no shame in losing to this team that has a realistic shot at finishing off a three-peat.
The Lightning started this run of now 10 series wins by being swept the year before, with the team that had set records for cap-era success and offense (much like Florida did this year). That swept was, if anything more embarrassing, though less about particularly offensive shortcomings but just a general sense that they lost their minds for four games against Columbus. The Panthers should take that example to say that staying the course with such a talented core is the learning they should take not remaking or reshaping the team. The 2019-20 Lightning on its face weren't too different than the 2018-19 team, other than the third line that they've already wholly remade. The 2022-23 Panthers hopefully will resemble much of the 2021-22 team - and hopefully for them the outcome will be better.
