Bolts still struggling to gain ground

BUFFALO, N.Y. The Lightning are on a roll, relatively speaking.

With a 6-1-2 record in the past nine games, Tampa Bay is enjoying its best stretch of the season as it plays the Sabres tonight. But even with just one regulation loss in the past nine games, gaining any ground in the playoff chance has been a difficult task.

With 29 games left in the season, Tampa Bay finds itself tied with Buffalo for 12th place in the Eastern Conference standings, nine points behind the Southeast Division lead and 10 points out of the eighth and final playoff spot.

According to sportsclubstats.com, the chance of Tampa Bay earning a playoff spot is 4.8 percent, giving the Lightning just a sliver of hope.

"We have to keep on winning and winning, but I think what we don't want to do is focus on other teams, period,'' Lightning head coach Guy Boucher said. "We can't control what other teams do. …We have to be even keel about what it is that we are doing.''

During their nine-game run, the Lightning have gained only four points in the standings.

But there is a ray of hope. All the Lightning have to do look across the Gandy Bridge at their counterparts from Major League baseball to know even a sliver of a chance means there is a chance.

On Sept. 3, the Tampa Bay Rays were nine games behind the Boston Red Sox for the wildcard spot. The Rays put together a 17-8 run and overcame a 7-0 deficit in the final game of the season to clinch a playoff spot.

"We set a short-term goal, because we didn't want to get ahead of ourselves,'' said Rays outfielder Matt Joyce, a Tampa native who is a frequent fan at Lightning games.

"We figured if we could pick up a game a week, we'd be OK. It gave us a focus. It gave us something to shoot for, but it wasn't something where we're trying to make up nine games in nine games. I think that was pretty important. We didn't get ahead of ourselves. We didn't try to do something too crazy.''

Inconsistent for most of the season, the Lightning have not been above the .500 mark since Nov. 28 and had not won more than three in a row until a five-game winning streak from Jan. 17-31.

The Rays were in a similar situation, starting the season on a six-game losing streak before putting together a run in May only to find themselves double-digits games behind by the end of July.

The team held a meeting in Seattle to talk about what it would take to climb back in the race. Manager Joe Maddon told the story of the 1995 season with the Anaheim Angels, which held an 11-½ game lead over Seattle on Aug. 16 only to be caught and lose a one-game playoff.

"Just be ourselves, be the same team we were all year, that's what Joe preached,'' Rays infielder Sean Rodriguez said. "That's the philosophy we all followed – stay loose, be ourselves, stay relaxed and we could make it happen.''

The Rays took on the same mentality Boucher has preached – be a rock climber and stay level by not looking up or down.

"You can't control what the other team is doing,'' Joyce said. "If the other team wins out, you tip your cap and say they had a great year. But, for us, we wanted to play our best baseball and control what we can control. That's what we did, and it seemed to work out for us.''