Lightning have to stop helping the Penguins win

What is certain about Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final on Friday night:

* Injured goalie Ben Bishop will not play, which means Andrei Vasilevskiy – he of the .935 save percentage for the playoffs and the ever-increasing frustration at the team playing in front of him – will play his third straight game.

* Injured star Steven Stamkos will not play.

* The Lightning are coming off a game at home in which they were absolutely humbled by the Pittsburgh Penguins.

So now what?

“We did take three away from them in the regular season. So it's not something we're sitting here saying, ‘Oh, we can't beat this team,’” said coach Jon Cooper. “We couldn't beat them in the last two games, and that's the way we're looking at it. So we have to just dig down and look through the past, do some of the things where we've had success, and really look at some of the things that are hurting us.”

So what’s hurting them? As Joe Smith of the Tampa Times notes, the puck possession game they usually excel at playing has been hijacked by the Penguins:

Puck management has been a major problem for the Lightning. Typically a strong possession team, Tampa Bay has given the Penguins many transition opportunities with turnovers in the neutral zone and its zone, hanging goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy out to dry. Wing Jonathan Drouin used his late second-period giveaway in Game 2 as an example. He forced a pass near the blue line instead of chipping the puck in. The Penguins scored the game's first goal on an ensuing odd-man rush.

"I think we're fueling them the way they want us to play," Drouin said. 

Johnson said the Lightning isn't executing; too many passes are at feet or off the mark. And when there's a chance, it's not shooting. "We're trying to do a fancy play, and you can't do that against this team," Johnson said. "They're too skilled, too fast. You feed their transition game. We've got to simplify things, get pucks to the net."

Easier said than done against a Penguins team his locked in.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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