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Lightning Encounter Division Stretch

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By ERIK ERLENDSSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 3, 2007

Updated: 11/03/2007 12:46 am

TAMPA - Lightning associate coach Mike Sullivan clapped his hands together as he walked up and down the bench. Later in Thursday's game against the Islanders, Coach John Tortorella did the same while patting a few backs along the way.

Both of Tampa Bay's coaches did their best to rally their team Thursday night in Long Island, trying to keep things positive despite staring full force at another road loss and a four-game winless streak.

As rough of a three-game road trip as Tampa Bay endured, losing all three games in New York by a combined 13-2 margin, the loss to the Islanders showed a marked improvement in the team's play.

The hope is that any type of momentum built off the way the team played Thursday carries over to tonight against Atlanta as the Lightning begin an eight-game stretch of games against Southeast Division opponents. With a crucial string of games coming up, Tampa Bay is in desperate need of turning things around in a hurry.

"I've never been this frustrated. I mean, I know it's only my second year in the league, but I look around the room and it's not from a lack of talent or lack of effort," defenseman Shane O'Brien said. "The coaches are doing everything they can to show us video. The hockey gods are just not giving us any breaks. I don't want to make excuses because there's no reasons, we just have to find a way to win hockey games."

When rough stretches like the one Tampa Bay is experiencing linger, things start to get hairy. Fingers can often start pointing in all directions looking for answers, or excuses.

That's not to imply that's the case right now with the Lightning, but things need to get righted in a hurry.

"Now we just have to stay together, and the key is sticking together and not getting into a situation where you are putting more and more pressure on yourself and getting more frustrated," Tortorella said. "We did some good things Thursday, though we don't get the result we wanted and we still have some things we need to clean up, but I think we took a step forward in trying to rehabilitate ourselves. And it's a we - we have to rehabilitate ourselves, all of us."

When a rough stretch such as the current winless streak plaguing Tampa Bay hits this early in the season, the microscope comes out, and the losses get scrutinized like a chemist's concoction that just blew up in its beaker.

Now it's a question of finding the right formula to make sure all of the ingredients bond to turn things back to how they were when Tampa Bay started the season 3-0.

"We just need to keep the wherewithal about ourselves to stay with ourselves, stay together and not get into a higher frustration level," Tortorella said. "They are frustrated because they haven't won, everybody likes winning, and they are not seeing the results. Eventually those results will come if we just stay within ourselves, and from this step we took as far as our play Thursday, take a positive out of it and build on it and hopefully we'll get a couple of breaks and find a way to score a goal here.

"It's a long year, and it's pretty magnified because it's early in the year and we're on a New York road trip where it's been a struggle, but you have to believe you will be a better team when you come through this, and that's the way we are going to go about it."

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

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