Lightning 5, Penguins 1

This may have been the worst game the Pens played all year. They managed only 18 shots on goal and were completely unable to muster any kind of offense. When you couple that with a few sloppy plays and some bad goal tending while it still mattered... you get the result that you see in the title.

Thibault wasn't very good, and that's an understatement. Since the game was depressing, I thought I could make this at least a little bit fun by bringing you: The Many Faces of Jocelyn Thibault.

• First we had T-DOH! make a bad clearing attempt early on, directly leading to a Lightning power play.
• On the ensuing power play, T-Bound showed up as he deflected the puck quite nicely to Martin St Louis, who put the puck in the empty net.
• Just a few minutes later, Thibault went down on a shot from the right slot that didn't make it through, and the puck trickled towards the middle of the ice. T-Slow, who was down on his knees, just couldn't get the legs going fast enough and just sort of leaned helplessly as the puck flew right past him.
• Early in the second, with the Pens down 2-0, we had another appearance of T-DOH! as he went to his knees on a bad angle attempt and allowed the puck to go between his arm and his body. The Lightning were up 3-0.
• Immediately after that, Michel Therrien had us all say T-Bye as Marc-Andre Fleury entered the game.

Though Thibault had the team off on the wrong foot, I don't think it would have mattered. The team was simply flat, and no one could do much to get them out of it. Ryan Malone tried fighting. You know it's bad if Ryan drops the gloves, because he's not very good at it (but I give him credit for trying).

The Pens had some brief momentum in the second, but could never get closer than 3-1. In the third, there were some lapses on the power play leading to a shortie and a nice passing play that was finished off by Brad Richards.

I think the team just needs to put this one behind them. They were clearly outplayed from the get go. This will happen every once in awhile. They need to forget about it and get ready for the onslaught in March.

Next up: a big one against New Jersey at the Igloo on Tuesday