The Bruins return to Tampa on Tuesday for the first time since their Eastern Conference triumph over the Lightning, but they’ll find a Lightning squad in a very different state than last spring.
Tampa Bay is dead last in the East. The Lightning’s vaunted 1-3-1 trap has yielded a league-worst 156 goals. And Tampa has yet to win in 2012, opening January on an 0-6-1 slide.
The Bruins have struggled a bit of late themselves, but have still found ways to win despite some uncharacteristic sloppy play. And with those results keeping the club within a point of the conference lead, Bruins coach Claude Julien isn’t going to panic just yet.
“We’ve got to be careful here we don’t consider ourselves in a slump,” Julien said Tuesday morning in Tampa. “It’s just our game has slipped a little bit. Our standard is pretty high and we’re just trying to get it back to that standard.”
To do that, Julien has tried to shake things up a bit. With Brad Marchand serving the final game of his five-game suspension and Rich Peverley away from the team to attend to a personal matter, Julien’s options up front are limited. But he did mix up the defense pairs Monday against Florida and could continue to tweak those combinations.
“This is something no different than moving forwards around, which I think if we were healthy we’d probably be doing right now,” Julien said. “Maybe once Marsh and Pev come back we will have some better options, but people have gotten so used to seeing those lines together and those pairings together for so long that every time there’s a change we seem to think it’s for a major reason, but it’s nothing more than moving those guys around a bit.”
On Monday, Adam McQuaid moved up to play with Dennis Seidenberg, while Joe Corvo slid down to the third pairing with Andrew Ference. Zdeno Chara and Johnny Boychuk stayed together on the top pair, but McQuaid also spent some time with Chara and the dominant playoff duo of Chara and Seidenberg was also reunited for a few shifts.
With Marchand and Peverley still out, Jordan Caron and Zach Hamill will remain in the lineup on a line with Chris Kelly, with Benoit Pouliot staying in Marchand’s spot alongside the red-hot Patrice Bergeron (7-4-11 totals in 7 January games) and Tyler Seguin.
After playing Monday night, the Bruins did not hold a morning skate on Tuesday, with just Marchand, Steven Kampfer and Tuukka Rask skating on their own. Tim Thomas is expected to get the start in goal after Rask played against the Panthers.
The Lightning held just an optional skate themselves. Mathieu Garon is expected to start in goal. His numbers are ugly (11-13-2, 3.03 GAA, .899 save percentage), but still better than Dwayne Roloson‘s (6-10-2, 3.68 GAA, .880 save percentage) this year. Roloson ranks 45th out of 45 qualified goalies in both GAA and save percentage, while Garon is 38th in both categories.
Tampa Bay has been hard hit by injuries, with defensemen Victor Hedman (concussion), Matthias Ohlund (surgery on both knees) and Marc-Andre Bergeron (back) as well as forwards Dana Tyrell (lower back), Adam Hall (forearm), Ryan Shannon (knee) and J.T. Wyman (finger) all out. Shannon and Wyman skated in non-contact jerseys on Tuesday, while Tyrell, Bergeron and Hedman skated on their own.
Eric Furlatt and Brad Meier will be the referees, with Steve Miller and Mark Shewchyk working the lines.
Projected Bruins lines
Forwards
Milan Lucic-David Krejci-Nathan Horton
Benoit Pouliot-Patrice Bergeron-Tyler Seguin
Jordan Caron-Chris Kelly-Zach Hamill
Daniel Paille-Gregory Campbell-Shawn Thornton
Defense
Zdeno Chara-Johnny Boychuk
Dennis Seidenberg-Adam McQuaid
Andrew Ference-Joe Corvo
Goalies
Tim Thomas
Tuukka Rask
Scratches: Brad Marchand (suspended), Rich Peverley (personal reasons), Steven Kampfer
Projected Lightning lines
Forwards
Steve Downie-Steven Stamkos-Martin St Louis
Ryan Malone-Vincent Lecavalier-Teddy Purcell
Nate Thompson-Dominic Moore-Brett Connolly
Pierre-Cedric Labrie-Tom Pyatt-Trevor Smith
Defense
Eric Brewer-Pavel Kubina
Brett Clark-Matt Gilroy
Brendan Mikkelson-Bruno Gervais
Goalies
Mathieu Garon
Dwayne Roloson
Scratches: JT Wyman (finger), Dana Tyrell (lower body), Marc-Andre Bergeron (back), Victor Hedman (concussion)
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