John Romano: Not every day you see a collapse like the Lightning had Sunday

John Romano, Tampa Bay Times on Nov 16, 2025

Published in Hockey

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TAMPA, Fla. — So, how ‘bout that Florida Panthers game?

The Tampa Bay Lightning were efficient, disciplined and gutty Saturday evening. Everything you hope to see from your favorite hockey team.

And everything the Lightning were not Sunday against the Vancouver Canucks.

Holy choke, that was ugly. After one of Tampa Bay’s more impressive victories of the season 24 hours earlier, the Lightning blew a third-period lead with amazing speed and remarkably little resistance in a 6-2 loss at home to the Canucks.

Vancouver scored three goals in a 100-second span to take the lead early in the period, and then just kept on putting the puck in the net.

“Unacceptable,” defenseman Erik Cernak said.

“Just not good enough,” forward Brayden Point said.

“We deserved what we got,” head coach Jon Cooper said.

You can choose your weapon when deciding how to dissect this game.

Blame it on the inability to put the Canucks away in the first two periods when NaturalStatTrick.com had the Lightning with a 15-1 advantage in high-danger chances in front of the goal. Blame it on the power play that was 0 for 2 — 0 for 9 in the last three games — and is 29th in the NHL at 15.3%. Or blame it on a team that got too comfortable after dominating the first half of the game.

“It’s like the tortoise and the hare. That’s what it was,” Cooper said. “One team got comfortable, and in this league, the second that happens, you’re done. We got comfortable, they stuck with it, and the right team won the game. That’s ultimately it.

“That’s where the disappointment is because we’re way the hell better than that.”

That was apparent in the first period when the Lightning completely dominated Vancouver, despite being the team that was playing back-to-back nights in two different cities. Tampa Bay took a 1-0 lead with 34 seconds remaining in the period when Darren Raddysh sent a cross-ice pass that Nikita Kucherov buried it in the bottom corner with a one-timer.

The goal was the 365th of Kucherov’s career, tying him with Marty St. Louis for third in Lightning history. St. Louis took 972 games to reach that number while Kucherov did it in 819 games. Vinny Lecavalier is next on the list at 383.

The Lightning kept the momentum going in the second period when Jake Guentzel tipped in a Cernak shot from the blue line to go up 2-0. Even after the Canucks cut the lead to 2-1 when Jake DeBrusk put in a rebound, the Lightning was still in control.

Tampa Bay got back-to-back power-play chances in the final six minutes of the period and struggled to even put shots on net.

“It’s not going great, that’s for sure,” Point said of the power play. “We’re trying. We had some looks on the earlier one in the second and the guy made some good saves. We’re still working on it. Still trying. Hopefully some pucks start going in.”

For a team that has had one of the stronger power plays in the NHL in recent years, the fear is that the lack of success is becoming a mental block that increases the degree of difficulty.

“Frustration is the worst thing in hockey,” Guentzel said. “We’ve just got to stay with it.”

Given a window to come back, the Canucks tied the score when a Kiefer Sherwood deflection went off J.J. Moser’s skate and then past Jonas Johansson. In the next 100 seconds, the Canucks scored two more goals on deflections directly in front of the net.

“That was the big thing in the third,” Cernak said. “In the first and second we were owning the front of the net. We were boxing guys out and didn’t give them anything. Then in the third, I don’t know what happened. We just weren’t strong enough there. We didn’t take the sticks away, we didn’t take the guys away.”

Tampa Bay outshot Vancouver 30-18, which doesn’t even begin to explain how unusual the result was. To put it in perspective, in more than 30 years of hockey the Lightning have had only one other game (Feb. 15, 2001 against the Bruins) when they gave up six goals on 18 shots or fewer.

“Yeah, a loss is disappointing,” Cooper said. “It’s how you got there is what you should be judging it on.

“If you’re outplayed and outmanned and your team tries as hard as it can, or is doing all the things you ask, well then you’re just outmanned,” Cooper said. “We weren’t outmanned tonight, let’s be honest.”

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