BRANDON — The tape doesn’t lie.
And a day after falling behind 1-0 in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarterfinal series against Detroit, Tampa Bay remained upbeat.
That stems not from the Lightning’s 3-2 loss, obviously, but the way they played in outshooting the Red Wings 46-14 and attempting more than 40 more shots. Tampa Bay did little wrong, other than not capitalizing on its many scoring chances.
“When you take all the intangible things — our compete level, our battle, our execution on everything but putting the puck in the net, breaking the puck out through the neutral zone and all the way in — it was pretty good,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.