NHL – Tampa Bay Lightning Thrash Anaheim Ducks 5-1

Led by Center Valtteri Filppula, Tampa Bay Lightning combined well as a team to beat the Anaheim Ducks in a convincing (5-1) fashion on Thursday night. In what was billed as a battle of Conference leaders, the Lightning, who did not feel the absence of their injured star center Steven Stamkos, came up with a strong defense to deny the Ducks several scoring chances.

While Filppula scored twice, Martin St. Louis, Alex Killorn and Victor Hedman scored a goal each for the winners, Emerson Etem netted the lone goal for the losers.

Asserting that his team skated well during the night and also produced a good game on the defensive end, Filppula said it was time that Tampa Bay learned how to play tough defense, particularly when playing without the services of Stamkos.

“We had really good legs tonight. Sometimes when you come off road trips the legs aren’t there but we skated well tonight and played well on the defensive end”, the star of the game said, adding “we are going to have to play tough on defense every night because without stammer we’re going to need to win low scoring games.”

Complimenting Flippula for shouldering the responsibility in the absence of Stamkos, Lightning coach Jon Cooper said: “He’s pretty confident kid right now. He’s making plays everywhere on ice that only a select few guys can make.” Expressing happiness over the concerted effort put by his team, Cooper said: “We talked about this length. Nobody’s filling 91’s shoes. Not one person can do it. Nobody in the league can do it. But, 20 guys can fill his shoes.”

Bemoaning Anaheim’s lackadaisical show despite putting a brave front in earlier games, the Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau said: “Even with our record, I thought we were pretty fragile. And once you got behind, it was like the shoulders dipped, and again, we didn’t have enough push back. It’s not us. We haven’t done that in 20 games. When they started to get physical, we didn’t meet the bell.”

Boudreau was also not keen to take blame it on the non-availability of their captain Ryan Getzlaf, who is missing his third game on account of injury. “If you want to give excuses, yeah. They are. We just didn’t compete hard enough in a game that was an important game. And when you don’t compete against a team that competes, it doesn’t matter who’s in the lineup or who’s out (of the lineup), you’re not going to have success.”

Filppula left the Ducks goaltender Jonas Hiller stranded when he scored the first goal of the game which came off a cross-ice feed from Teddy Purcell. It was a wrist shot from Filppula that earned him the next goal in the second period. As if that was not enough, Filppula produced a power-play goal to make it 3-0. Then, it was the turn of Killorn to make it 4-0. Etem netted the consolation goal for Anaheim to alter the scoreboard for the first time (4-1). Soon into the third, Hedman scored to widen the lead for the Lightning.