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Tired Devils are too much
By TOM JONES © St. Petersburg Times, published January 16, 1999 EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The Lightning simply couldn't run with the Devils Friday night. That's of little surprise, of course. It can't swim with the Sharks, fly with the Flyers, howl with the Coyotes, or do anything with any team these days. But this game was there for the taking. The Devils were ripe to be beat. They were tired, sick, worn down. Ripe. Then again, the Lightning was ripe to be beat, too, because it is, well, the Lightning. So let's get this straight: It was a game the Devils could've lost. And it was a game the Lightning could've lost. One guess which team lost. To add injuries to insult, the Lightning's defense took a major hit. Kjell Samuelsson injured his hamstring and Drew Bannister has a possible broken wrist. Both could be out awhile. Tampa Bay dropped its seventh straight game 3-1 Friday as the Devils took their turn with the league's punching bag. The Devils scored three second-period goals on the power play to erase a Lightning lead before 16,037 at the Continental Airlines Arena. "I say this over and over, but we competed hard, but we just can't score," Lightning coach Jacques Demers said. "Good teams find a way to get the puck through to the net. We don't find a way to get the puck through. "And that's one of the league's elite teams we could have beat tonight." Rarely does the Lightning have a chance to beat an elite team on the road, but Friday night was such an opportunity. New Jersey played Thursday night in Ottawa and was stranded there when a major ice storm pounded the Northeast, closing airports from Washington to New England. The Devils didn't arrive in New Jersey until a few hours before Friday night's game. But it was long enough to shower, eat, sleep a few minutes, then grab their clubs before heading out the door for the game. "They looked well-rested to me," Demers said. "Hey, they're professional and they did what it took." The clubbing began early in the second period after the Lightning took a 1-0 lead on Darcy Tucker's 11th goal on the power play at the 5:18. The night looked promising. The Lightning looked strong. Tampa Bay goalie Corey Schwab was stopping slap shots, wrist shots and kitchen sinks. Predictably, the Lightning eventually crashed. For those who have never seen a roof cave in, it looks something like this: Lightning penalty. Brian Rolston goal. Lightning penalty. Petr Sykora goal. Lightning penalty. Denis Pederson goal. It took about 10 minutes for the walls to break, and the Lightning was left to sift through the rubble of another loss. The worst penalty was the last. In the Devils zone and away from the puck, Chris Gratton was penalized two minutes for roughing (he punched New Jersey's Bobby Holik) and two more for arguing with referee Dan Marouelli. "Chris Gratton may have had his best game with the Lightning since he's been back, but that was a stupid penalty," Demers said. "Gratton has to learn to look at the scoreboard and realize when it's 2-1, you just can't take a bad penalty like that. It was a bad penalty, simple as that." The Lightning never quit, but by the time it stopped hitting the snooze button late in the second period, the Devils appeared to have overcome the rust from their laborious travel woes. Goalie Martin Brodeur stopped Benoit Hogue on a key save late in the second period and snuffed any hopes of a Lightning comeback. "I still don't know how he stopped that shot on Benoit Hogue," Demers said of Brodeur. "That might have been the turning point of the game. We score there, who knows what happens? That's why he is an elite goalie." The victory gave the Devils a 20-5-4 record against Tampa Bay, including 13-1-1 in New Jersey. And to think, this may have been the Lightning's best chance to beat Jersey on the road in years.
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