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Bolts' Road Woes Hit A Deep 6

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By ERIK ERLENDSSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 2, 2007

UNIONDALE, N.Y. - Lightning-style hockey returned Thursday. But that elusive first road victory, well, it's still appears as far off as a ship on the crest of the horizon trying to make its way from across the other side of the world.

Tampa Bay suffered through its sixth consecutive road loss to start the season with a 4-0 loss to the New York Islanders that kept the Lightning winless in four consecutive. Tampa Bay was also swept by the three New York metro area teams on the same road trip and has been outscored 28-10 on the road this season, including 13-2 in the three games in the New York area.

The Lightning have allowed the first goal of the game in all six road games this season and have never led in a road game to date.
Rick DiPietro stopped 28 shots for his 12th career shutout, second all-time against Tampa Bay, as the Islanders snapped an eight-game losing streak to the Lightning.

During the three-game swing, Lightning coach John Tortorella tried verbally ripping his team through the media after a loss to the Rangers, he tried a bus-to-nowhere ride on the one off day, preached defensively responsibility leading to better offense, and in his last trick to try to shake the team out of its struggles, shook the line combinations and defensive pairings for Thursday.

None of it resulted in a victory despite creating more scoring chances against the Islanders (16) than Tampa Bay did in the previous two games combined.

"I thought we forechecked better, I thought we were stronger on the puck but we just couldn't finish," Tortorella said.

The Lightning had the type of start they wanted, coming out and applying offensive zone pressure. Jan Hlavac - who seems to have assumed Vinny Prospal's spot as most snakebitten player on the team - had a clean break off a nice feed from Brad Richards but DiPietro robbed him with a glove save at the nine-minute mark.

"I thought DiPietro was the difference in the first period, which was probably our best period on the road trip," Tortorella said. "They go down and they bang one in."

After a strong shift from the Richards line, keeping the puck in the offensive zone for a long stretch, Bill Guerin came down right wing and fired a shot from the circle that found its way through Marc Denis, who was making his second start of the season, at 13:29.

Although a potentially deflating goal, Tampa Bay kept up the pressure in the second, but when Paul Ranger inadvertently kicked a puck into his own net at 12:19 and former Lightning Ruslan Fedotenko put in a rebound with 47.3 seconds left in the second, another road loss was assured.

"It just feels like right now no matter what we do, and I don't want to make excuses because we are all professionals and we have to find a way to win, but we worked so hard and created so many chances," defenseman Shane O'Brien said. "I don't think it was a 4-0 loss tonight. I think if we can get a lead on the road we can be a pretty successful team, but right now we are just squeezing our sticks, and it's not from a lack of effort."

And perhaps the effort level put in Thursday - Tampa Bay's best since early in Saturday's overtime loss to Buffalo - is the best positive to take out of the game.

"I thought our try was there and I thought our try was at an even higher level tonight," Tortorella said. "I thought early in the trip we talked about what we had to do as a club, it's been defined, now we just have to stay together."

But for now, the bow on the ship of that first road win barely breaks the horizon.

Reporter Erik Erlendsson can be reached at (813) 259-7835 or eerlendsson@tampatrib.com.

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