Tampa's last game ended with Victor Hedman scoring 2:07 into overtime for a 4-3 win over Seattle, after the Kraken erased 2 Lightning leads in the 3rd. Brandon Hagel scored twice and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 24 saves. The strange part of the Lightning's start is who isn't scoring. Kucherov and Guentzel came up empty again against Seattle. Kucherov has still been setting people up, with 8 points (1 goal, 7 assists) through his first 5 games, so the goals are coming from the supporting cast while the top line feeds them.
Both teams played on Thursday, so neither one gets a rest advantage. The difference is the travel. Vancouver has a short bus ride across the state at the end of a 2-week trip, and Tampa sleeps in its own beds. The Lightning have been good at Benchmark International Arena early on: they beat the Flyers 4-1, the Wild 3-2 and Seattle in overtime. Their one recent loss, a 1-4 at the Rangers, came on the road.
The injury lists aren't the story on either side, with one exception. Tampa is without Yanni Gourde, who is on the injured non-roster list with a hip injury, and that thins its bottom-6 a little. Vancouver has Jack Thompson, Akil Thomas and Mackenzie MacEachern on IR, but Demko's absence is the one that changes things. Without him, a team that can't score has no margin for error in its own end.
So the question is simple. Can the Canucks finally find a 3rd goal, or will Meriläinen have to steal one by himself? Tampa's top line hasn't been finishing and the Lightning keep letting teams back into games late, so this could stay closer than the records suggest. The Canucks still have to show they can hold a lead for 60 minutes. They haven't done it yet this month.