Coach's wrath tempers win

LIGHTNING 4, PENGUINS 1: Bouncing back from Friday's rout doesn't satisfy an irate John Tortorella.

By TOM JONES
Published November 28, 2005

	[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]
	Penguins center Maxime Talbot knocks heads in the third period with Lightning goalie John Grahame, who had a shutout until Talbot's short-handed goal with 1:13 left in the game.

TAMPA - The Lightning beat the Penguins 4-1 Sunday at a sold-out St. Pete Times Forum, so all must be right in its world again, wouldn't you think?

But here's some advice: If you run into Lightning coach John Tortorella around town today, you might want to avoid that kind of talk.

Despite shaking off the aftershocks of Friday's embarrassing 8-2 loss to New Jersey with a victory, the Lightning did take another kind of beating Sunday. From its coach.

"We still have a long ways to go," an agitated Tortorella said. "It's beyond me how this team wasn't ready to play (Sunday). And it wasn't."

Even though the Lightning led 1-0 after one period, Tortorella laid into his team during expletive-filled first intermission dress-down.

"It wasn't pretty," forward Marty St. Louis said.

"He told us in pretty hard terms that we better get our (rear ends) in gear," forward Rob DiMaio said. "Fortunately, we did."

The Lightning recovered and managed to hold off a struggling Penguins team that was without captain Mario Lemieux (stomach virus) and a 100 percent Sidney Crosby, who was slowed by a bruised foot. That it played much better in the second and third periods was hardly a consolation to Tortorella.

"After getting spanked like we did against New Jersey and then start the game like we did against Pittsburgh?" Tortorella said. "There's no excuse for it."

By Tortorella's estimation, the Lightning gave up 20 scoring chances, a number he called "ridiculous." Most came in the first period and would've proved costly had it not been for the superb goaltending of John Grahame, who had a shutout going until 1:13 left in the game.

"John Grahame is the reason we won the hockey game," Tortorella said, "because we could've been down by two or three goals at the end of that first period and he came up big."

His biggest save came when he stopped Matt Murley on a penalty shot with the Lightning ahead 1-0.

"If they score there, it's a 1-1 game and we're back on our heels again," center Tim Taylor said. "There are turns of events that happen in a game that help dictate what the outcome is going to be. That was one of them."

After the shaky first, Grahame's key stops and Tortorella's tongue-lashing, the Lightning got back on track, outshooting the Penguins 18-3 in the second period and pulling away on goals by DiMaio and Fredrik Modin. The Lightning salted away the game in the third when Modin scored again for his fourth two-goal game of the season.

Meantime, DiMaio, who had been virtually absent from the score sheet for the first 20 games, also picked up an assist and has five points in the past five games.

"My game had nowhere to go but up," DiMaio said. "I had a real tough start to this year and I wasn't happy with myself, so there was lots of room to move and improve."

Despite catching Tortorella's wrath, the Lightning did erase the ugly memories of Friday's thumping.

"Obviously, this was a pretty big game for us," Modin said. "We just wanted to forget about New Jersey. We wanted to come out and play good hockey and get back on track. We felt we were playing good hockey prior (to the New Jersey game). It's nice to come back with a win."

The victory gives the Lightning a 6-1-1 record since its six-game losing streak. It improved to 13-10-3 and sits two points behind first-place Carolina in the Southeast Division.

But only a better effort Wednesday is going to satisfy Tortorella.

"It's up to the players, and they weren't ready to play today," Tortorella said. "We're .500 at home (actually, 6-5-1). We're going nowhere until we start playing 60 minutes of hockey in our own building."

Forty minutes was good enough to beat the Penguins. It wasn't enough, however, to best Tortorella.

[Last modified November 28, 2005, 01:04:15]