Lightning’s Julien BriseBois is happy with the team’s play so far - Tampa Bay Times

TAMPA — No one can resist comparing this year’s Lightning team to last year’s. Not even Julien BriseBois.

The Lightning general manager likes the way this team is playing at New Year’s more than he liked the way last season’s team was playing at the same point.

Wait, he said that about a team that was 13-0-1 in December 2018 compared with the current good-not-great 8-4-1 month? Yup.

“Last season, our record outperformed our play,” BriseBois said during a midseason assessment before Sunday’s 2-1 win against the Red Wings at Amalie Arena. “This year, it’s kind of the opposite, where our record has lagged behind our play on the ice. But if we keep playing the way we’re playing, that should correct itself and it will bode well for the rest of the season.”

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Enforcing that point, BriseBois estimated that after maybe half of December 2018’s games, he left the rink disappointed in how the Lightning was playing. Though they were winning, but he didn’t think it was sustainable based on their play. (Sure enough, issues were addressed and the Lightning played an inspired game the next three months.)

A year later, BriseBois doesn’t think their current pace is sustainable the other way. He said he believes they’ll start earning more points based on their play.

The way he looks at the standings — through points percentage — the Lightning are a playoff team. Based on that, going into Sunday’s games they were third in the Atlantic Division, having earned .583 percent of their potential points.

Even when sorting strictly by points, the Lightning were fourth, just outside a playoff spot. But the Atlantic is a very tight division. Entering Sunday, the sixth-place Sabres, Tuesday’s opponent, were within two points of the third-place Panthers.

BriseBois rattled off the statistics: The Lightning were No. 2 in the NHL in goals for, first on the power play, second on the penalty kill since Nov. 1. Every individual player had fewer turnovers than last year. Penalties were down from last year.

“October was a bit of a learning curve, and now it’s trending in the right direction,” BriseBois said. “If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’re going to have a strong second half.”

He doesn’t believe the Lightning have had a lot of bad games — a “train wreck” against Carolina in a Game 3 4-3 overtime loss and a bad week in New York with losses to the Rangers and Islanders and an overtime win against the Devils before heading to Sweden. Since beating the Sabres twice in Sweden, he said, there has been maybe a poor period here or there. But the Lightning has had the upper hand in most of its games.

That’s not to say everything is perfect.

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Coach Jon Cooper stressed the need for points earlier Sunday. He has made the same point about the Lightning playing well many times. But they also need to move up in the standings. The Lightning have one to four games in hand on each team above them in the standings. But those count for anything only if the Lightning win them.

One area in which BriseBois would like to see further improvement is the quality scoring chances allowed. It was a focus coming out of last season, and the Lightning have taken steps toward improvement this season but could still be better.

The biggest difference BriseBois has seen in analytics over his 20 years in the league is a better understanding of what correlates to regular-season wins versus playoff wins.

“That’s why we put a lot of emphasis in reducing the number of quality chances against,” he said, “because that’s a key variable in predicting playoff success.”

That’s what this season is about: playoff success.

Last season’s first-round sweep by the Blue Jackets stung not because it was a sweep, but because it was a sweep in which the Lightning didn’t play especially well. Since then, most everything they have done has been to set themselves up to do better in the spring this season.

Contact Diana C. Nearhos at dnearhos@tampabay.com. Follow @dianacnearhos.

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Lightning’s Julien BriseBois is happy with the team’s play so far - Tampa Bay Times
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