The Hurricanes suffocated the Lightning in an almost unimaginable way

The Carolina Hurricanes held the Tampa Bay Lightning to 13 shots in Sunday evening’s game, but that’s not the most unbelievable stat of their 4-3 overtime win.

The shots on goal in the Carolina Hurricanes‘ game against the Tampa Bay Lightning show a more lopsided affair than the final score — a 4-3 overtime victory for Carolina — would suggest. The Hurricanes, through nearly 62 minutes of play, more than doubled up the Lightning in shots 44-13 after coming from behind two goals to take their third victory of the season.

While the shot differential of 44-13 is staggering on its own, how the Hurricanes came about this result is almost unthinkable. In the first period of play, the Lightning had 11 shots on goal as they coasted to an opening 3-1 lead in Carolina. For the remaining 42 minutes of the game, the Lightning managed just two shots on Hurricanes’ goaltender Petr Mrazek, a staggering statistic given how deep Tampa Bay’s offensive lineup is this season.

The heat maps of Sunday night’s game showcase just how lopsided the game was between the Hurricanes and Lightning, as while Tampa Bay was able to score on the few shots they did have, they were smothered quite handily by the Hurricanes for the remainder of the game. The advanced stats also back up the Hurricanes’ domination of puck possession as well, as Carolina held Tampa Bay to a staggeringly low 27.08 Corsi For% at 5-on-5, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Those statistics nearly seem impossible given how hockey works, and how deep the Lightning’s offensive talent pool is. It’s rare to see a NHL team net zero shots in a period, but it happens from time to time if a team takes too many penalties in a frame or just flat out stops playing. This, however, is an incredibly unbelievable sight in today’s modern NHL, especially with a team like Tampa Bay that boasts talent like Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman on a night-to-night basis.

The Lightning, to their credit, haven’t sugarcoated their demoralizing loss to the Hurricanes, a defeat that has capped off a disappointing 1-1-1 start to their season after getting swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the opening round of the playoffs a season prior.

“We just continue to be the freewheeling team that thinks we can just come into games and win because we’re skilled,” captain Stamkos said to Tampa Bay media following the loss. “We keep falling back into the same old bad habits that we’ve been doing, that cost us the season we had last year.

“Unless we change things, it’s going to be a really, really, really long year.”

The season is still early for everyone, but the Lightning very well should use this game as a wake up call that coasting on skill alone won’t win them hockey games if they want to advance far.

For the Hurricanes, however, their season has started better than they could have anticipated, as they sit at 3-0 to start the season atop the NHL itself as the only three-win team in the league. The 3-0 start also marks the second time in franchise history the Hurricanes opened the season with three wins, with their last stretch being in 1995-96 before the team’s relocation to Carolina. All three of their wins this year have come in overtime, and all after trailing after two periods of play.

The Hurricanes also brought back their popular after victory Storm Surge celebration for a second year in a row as the team hopes for an extended playoff stay after getting swept in the Eastern Conference Final last season.