Lightning goalie Smith back to having fun

One night after picking up a rare shootout victory against Atlanta, the Lightning finished practice on Thursday with a shootout practice.

Mike Smith, who stopped all four shootout attempts Wednesday night, stood in his crease at one point and performed a spin-o-rama with a shooter bearing down on him. So, Sean Bergenheim tried to one-up the Lightning goaltender, pulling out his own spin-o-rama move to imitate the controversial move made last week by Edmonton's Linus Omark and drawing plenty of laughs.

Smith countered, again doing a pirouette and drawing more chuckles from his teammates before stopping Bergenheim's attempt, to the delight of everyone watching.

It was a rare loose moment for Smith, who in recent weeks has had few reasons to laugh about his game. But after stopping 27 shots and allowing one goal against Atlanta in his first start in nearly two weeks, Smith rediscovered something that was previously absent.

"I want to go back to having fun in net," Smith said. "Thinking about the game and just going out and playing are two totally different things. Out there (Thursday), I was just nice and relaxed, while at the same time trying to get better. But you have to find the happy medium between the two, and last game I enjoyed playing again. ... (Wednesday) was a game where I just said to go out and have fun, enjoy it and whatever happens, happens."

What happened was a turnaround game for Smith from his previous two outings. In losses at Washington and Boston, Smith allowed nine goals on 40 shots, a .725 save percentage. That snapped a four-game winning streak for Smith, who had looked ready to take the ball and run with it.

After Smith made some mental errors while handling the puck in the loss at Boston, Lightning coach Guy Boucher wanted to get Smith back into a stable state of mind before giving him another start.

"We felt with him, he had a few starts where it really wasn't going his way with bad luck and with him not playing the way he's supposed to. All that mixed up together makes for a hard mountain to climb," Boucher said. "Sometimes it takes taking a step back and seeing that the mountain is not that big, it makes you breathe and it makes you able to manage the pressure that goes along with it. ... You want to make sure guys have fun playing this game and that they feel they can contribute."

With reports this week the agent for former San Jose goaltender Evgeni Nabokov had reached out to Tampa Bay to let General Manager Steve Yzerman know his client is on the market after leaving his Russian team, Tampa Bay's goaltenders, including Dan Ellis, are under a more powerful microscope. Smith has a 9-5 record with a 3.36 goals-against average and an .879 save percentage while Ellis is a tick better at 8-5-4 with a 3.23 GAA and .876 save percentage.

Solid performances like the one Smith had Wednesday would deflect some of that negative attention.

"You don't think about it, you don't worry about what happens outside this locker room and everything will work out the way it should," Smith said. "I can't control what everyone else is saying. I can't control what everyone else is doing. I can only control what this team is doing and help this team win, and at the end of the day, that's all you can do.

"Professional athletes go through this kind of stuff all the time. No one thinks about how we are off to the best start in franchise history, both goalies have winning records. Everyone thinks about their stats, which don't mean anything in the big picture of things."

eerlendsson@tampatrib.com

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