Forward Luke Glendening is getting to know the Tampa Bay Lightning during his first season playing for them in blue.
The third-time Stanley Cup winners are undoubtedly pleased with what the fourth-line center is demonstrating on the ice.
The Lightning will want to pick up two more points when they face the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday night after winning the first two games of their four-game homestand in overtime.
His gritty pivot, who is renowned for his faceoff skill and grinding style, is held in high regard by coach Jon Cooper.
To qualify for the postseason in the very competitive Eastern Conference, the Lightning will need to play a lot stronger second half of the season, and lately, it has been the 11-year veteran’s scoring touch that has emerged to play a critical part.
Glendening gave Tampa Bay a boost through 20 minutes of the team’s 4-3 overtime victory over the New Jersey Devils on Thursday. He scored twice in the first period, including the team’s first short-handed goal of the season and his eighth career.
“I thought we grinded tonight — we weren’t great — but we stuck to it and got two points in the end,” said Glendening, whose eight points (seven goals) has already surpassed his six-point total with the Dallas Stars in 2022-23. “We’ve put ourselves in this spot and have got to dig our way out a little bit here.”
When the native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, scores, the Lightning lead 6-0-0.
Jokingly, Glendening expressed his happiness to be playing with the Lightning and players like Nikita Kucherov, who assisted Darren Raddysh on Thursday’s game-winning goal, rather than against them.
“I’ve played against (Kucherov) for 10 years, so it’s really nice to be on this side,” said Glendening, who spearheads the bottom line with Austin Watson and Michael Eyssimont. “(These guys are) just a bunch of competitors. When things don’t go their way, they stick with it. That’s why they’ve been so successful in the past.”
For the Ducks, things are not quite as good.
Anaheim discovered that its two points came at a significant cost despite defeating the Predators 5-3 on Tuesday in Nashville to begin a six-game road trip that will take them largely east of the Mississippi River this season.
It lost two promising young players in Music City: rookie defender Pavel Mintyukov (separated shoulder) and winger Trevor Zegras (broken left ankle) in his 200th NHL game.
Zegras, 22, will have surgery shortly and be off for six to eight weeks. Mintyukov, 20, will be absent for around six weeks.
“It’s a bad omen when he got hurt, but we fought through it,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said after the costly win. “When you have that happen, your lines are never going to be the same, so you have to stay focused. We did a good job with that.”
The Ducks lost 6-3 against the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday, and they have now lost six of their last seven games (1-5-1).
“We couldn’t get shots on net,” Cronin said of the trip’s second outing. “They were blocking shots. When you’re not generating chances to feed momentum, it’s just going to be a long night.”
The Lightning have a current three-game winning streak against Anaheim and are 12-3-1 in their 16 matches dating back to the 2014–15 season.