Lightning Preview

The beast of the east come to town tonight to face the Boston Bruins. That's right! The Tampa Bay Lightning come to Boston this evening. Alright, the Lightning are not the "beast of the east" but, they do scare me quite a bit. They have these two guys, Vinny Lecavalier and Marty St. Louis, not sure if you have heard of them. If you haven't, they are two incredibly potent scoring threats who have the speed and the hands to make a slumping Bruins team look like lifeless puppets.

Tonight, the Bruins scoring drought will be facing either the newly acquired Mike Smith or member of the merry-go-round of goalies coming to and from the AHL (Karri Ramos maybe? He played in Springfield for the Falcons last year when Tampa was an affiliate there). Smith shouldn't be taken lightly as he is an up and coming star that has had some very strong showings in Dallas and in Tampa this season.

I have two keys two tonight's game as the Bruins really need to KISS (keep it simple stupid!!!)...

1. Crash With Traffic: The Bruins need ugly goals like the class geek needs his Advanced Honors Aeronautics book and his Magic cards. The best way to create goals is to screen the goaltender, put pucks on net, and scramble for the rebound. It's simple, and very easy to take advantage of it.

2. Defense first: All five guys need to back-check and get back into the zone to play sound defense. Offensive rushes start with shutting down the other team and breaking out of your own zone. No one should be lagging back looking for a turnover and a home run pass. This team is not designed for that. The guys in front of Thomas (he's starting tonight) need to pick up bodies and clear loose pucks away from the danger zone in the low slot.

This is a major two points tonight and it needs to come in regulation. The Bruins need a confidence boost right now and a convincing regulation win and a strong showing by Thomas could do the trick. We'll see come 7:00 pm if this team can take advantage of a low-end Eastern Conference team. God knows they haven't been able to take care of non-playoff teams lately. Let's go boys!