Mired in slump, do the Tampa Bay Lightning still have “it?”
If time moves quickly in the world of sports, it operates at warp speed in the NHL. It was just last winter that the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Mikko Rantanen saga, and the unholy alliance between Brad Marchand and the Florida Panthers were all crammed into a dizzying six-week stretch. It feels longer than 15 months ago, then, that Tampa Bay Lightning GM Julien BriseBois gave Steve Stamkos the cold shoulder ahead of free agency.
BriseBois would not offer his captain, whose stature in team history is unmatched, even second-line money to finish his career in Tampa, preferring a younger, more defensively adept sniper in Jake Guentzel. After the initial shock, the indirect swap proved to be the right call. Guentzel will feature heavily for the United States at the Olympics, barring an injury. Stamkos’s Nashville vacation, meanwhile, has been roughly as memorable as Serge Savard’s time with the original Winnipeg Jets.
Tampa, thank you for everything 💙 Not sure words are enough to express my feelings , but I gave it a try . Big thanks to the @PlayersTribune for helping me put this together. https://t.co/kQbpspFAn2
— Steven Stamkos (@RealStamkos91) July 15, 2024More importantly, the Guentzel sign-and-trade was the start of a well-needed facelift for a Lightning team that had come to rely too heavily on high-end scoring in the years following three consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances, including a pair of championship victories, from 2020-22. After they finished 22nd in scoring defense in 2023-24, Tampa’s deficiencies in the hard areas of the game were laid bare by the almighty Panthers in the 2024 postseason; the Cats jumped out to a 3-1 series lead before closing the book on the Stamkos era in a 6-1 Game 5 romp.
At 5’11, 175 lbs, Guentzel is no Alex Killorn. Still, he wasn’t shy about digging in the corners and even chipped in on the PK in his first campaign with the Lightning. Stamkos had not contributed much in those areas during his last few seasons with Tampa, as age and injuries had reduced him to a perimeter shooter, albeit a very dangerous one. On the blueline, BriseBois swapped Mikhail Sergachev for J.J. Moser of the then-unnamed Utah Mammoth in a cost-cutting move that provided future Hall-of-Famer Victor Hedman with his most natural fit on the top pair since, well, ever.
Where Hedman had long carried so-so sidekicks like Jan Rutta, Zach Bogosian, and Darren Raddysh, Moser’s quiet reliability on his off side enabled the first-year captain’s best defensive results in years; the smooth-skating duo controlled more than 57% of expected goals and scoring chances before Moser went down in December with a lower-body injury. Moser took some time to get his game legs back after his February return, but helped reintroduce the defensive commitment the Lightning lost when the Killorns and the Palats and the McDonaghs became business decisions all the same.
Speaking of Ryan McDonagh, BriseBois needed less than a month of ruminating over the first-round loss to Florida to bring ole “Trucker” back from Nashville. In his first season back beside Erik Cernak on the gutsy second pair that helped Tampa win two Cups, McDonagh led the NHL in plus-minus (+43) and the Lightning’s sixth-ranked penalty kill in minutes. With McDonagh back on board and unflappable netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy back at 100% (.921 SV%, league-high 63 GP, Vezina runner-up) after an injury-hit 2023-24, the Bolts supplemented their high-powered, first-placed attack, led by two-time defending Art Ross winner Nikita Kucherov, with a top-four scoring D.
Even though Tampa’s Eastern Conference-leading goal difference (+75) wasn’t enough to catch the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Atlantic Division, it helped secure home ice for a highly anticipated rematch with, you guessed it, the Panthers. After recruiting faces old (Yanni Gourde) and new (Oliver Bjorkstrand) from Seattle to shore up their forward depth at the deadline, all that was left for the Lightning was to prove that their new-look lineup could recapture the old playoff pedigree that had abandoned them in ‘23 and ‘24.
It did not go famously. Again, the Cats blew the doors off of Tampa in five, and again, the Lightning hardly ever led outside of their lone victory. This loss stung worse than 2024’s, and not just because of the undeniable reality that the defending Stanley Cup Champion Panthers were now the A-side of the nasty rivalry. Tampa rebuilt its supporting cast for the express purpose of getting through Sam Bennett, Matthew Tkachuk, and the rough-and-tumble Cats. Instead, they played right into Florida’s hands.
By now, you’ve seen Team Canada sparkplug Brandon Hagel’s ill-fated attempt to drag Tampa into the fight by wiping out Panthers’ captain Sasha Barkov away from the puck, the retribution Tkachuk took on Guentzel, and, finally, Aaron Ekblad’s dreadful headshot on Hagel after the latter’s return from suspension. No one thrives amid a fiasco like the Panthers, whose 7-0 victory over the Lightning during a Slapshot-esque preseason melee earlier this month was another twist of the knife into their one-time big brother.
THE PANTHERS AND LIGHTNING ARE AT WAR 😱🥊 pic.twitter.com/EQlFAnivXZ
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) October 4, 2025Though Guentzel (3 G, 6 P) showed up, few of his veteran teammates could say the same. Vasilevskiy’s once-glistening playoff record gained a forgettable addendum (3.27 GAA, .872 SV%); Kucherov’s cross-ice magic fell flat (0 G, 4 P) against a bludgeoning Florida defense; and Hedman got tagged for a -6. Anthony Cirelli, another Stanley Cup holdover who finished third in Selke voting, got pancaked by the vaunted Bennett line (31.89% expected-goal share vs. Bennett, 33.48% overall) with frightening ease. Speedy sniper Brayden Point, who poured in 28 combined goals during Tampa’s Cup triumphs, struggled to capitalize on a team-high 12 high-danger chances (2 G).
The Lightning’s championship core looked rejuvenated with Guentzel, who has a ring of his own (2017 with PIT), Moser, and McDonagh on board during the regular season. When the chips were down, though, coach Jon Cooper’s men looked tired, and not just because of Hedman’s characteristic eye bags.
Cooper’s group knows better than anyone how to win, and that might be the problem: can a team really achieve the level of desperation it takes to survive the postseason when it’s already reached the summit so many times? That’s the timeless question that’s ended golden eras in L.A., Chicago, and Pittsburgh over the past decade. It’s the same question that will come for the Panthers, who have taken the baton of NHL supremacy from Tampa, before long.
It’s a question the Lightning will have to ask themselves a little early this year now that their struggles have stretched into the start of 2025-26. Kucherov and Co. have just one win in six tries, and their superior individual talent has failed them against the desperate, hungry teams of the East who want what they once had.
LIGHTNING MISS A GREAT CHANCE AND AS A RESULT LARKIN IS IN ALL ALONE AND WINS IT!!!!🚨 pic.twitter.com/adXYn57LRT
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) October 18, 2025Maybe Tampa’s woes are simply an early-season statistical anomaly. Point, for instance, is -8 despite the best expected goal share on the team (58.66%). Hagel (30.5 G per 82 GP from 2022-25) hasn’t found twine on any of his 15 shots, and Vasilevskiy has just one quality start on the season. Those trends won’t hold. On the other hand, McDonagh and Gourde suddenly look every day of their age (36 and 34, respectively), the rush defense is a mess, and the team is generating neither shots (31st) nor goals (23rd). A one-win team that’s getting outshot by an average of eight attempts per game isn’t a sleeping giant; it’s just sleeping.
Cooper is too affable to give us any Jim Mora-style meltdowns, and he hasn’t made it through 12 seasons by crumbling under pressure. Surely, though, the Team Canada bench boss knows that when the puck drops on Tampa’s three-game homestand tonight (the surprisingly dangerous Blackhawks are in town), it has to start a new season for the Lightning, one where the results keep the existential questions at bay until at least the spring of 2026.
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