WARNINGNSH
Rush defense leaked all night
Gave up 30 rush shots worth 2.42 xG (2 goals) — transition gaps were there every period.
Tighten neutral-zone structure and keep D gaps closed on entries.
The verdict · earned
The Lightning earned it — the game and the expected-goals battle both.
NSH 1 · TBL 2
Preseason · exhibition
Split squads and prospects, not the club that will take the ice in October. The shots and grades below describe this game only: nothing here counts toward season records, form, rankings or player numbers.
◆ By the ModelSep 22, 10:39 PMxG: xgboost-0.758Edited for clarityDrafted from NHL play-by-play by Backcheck's model, worded for clarity by an AI editor that may not change a number. Nobody at Backcheck was at the rink. How this works
Tampa Bay beat Nashville 2-1, and the final score is the only close thing about how this game actually played out. I. Mikheyev opened the scoring less than two minutes in, Nashville answered before the period was half over, and then Conor Geekie put the Lightning back ahead for good — the goal that decided things, even if nobody knew it yet. From there, Tampa Bay simply had the puck more than Nashville did, and it showed.
Mikheyev got the Lightning on the board early, finishing a feed from J. Carlson and B. Point to make it 0-1. Nashville answered in the first period as well: B. Martin scored off a setup from R. Schaefer and J. Ahcan to tie it 1-1. The answer didn't last. Later in the same period, Geekie snapped one home from the high slot off a pass from S. O'Reilly, and that turned out to be the winner. J. Saros made 20 saves on 22 shots for Nashville; A. Vasilevskiy stopped 12 of 13 at the other end.
Here's what the scoreboard hides: Tampa Bay controlled 70% of the expected goals at 5-on-5, outproducing Nashville 3.28 to 1.39. That is not a narrow edge — it means the Lightning were generating the better, more dangerous looks essentially all game, and a 2-1 final flatters how competitive this actually was. The shot-attempt battle told the same story, 63% Tampa Bay, and high-danger chances were even more lopsided: four for the Lightning, zero for the Predators. Nashville didn't manufacture a single high-quality look from the inner slot all night.
If anything, Tampa Bay should have won by more. The Lightning generated 3.28 expected goals and scored two, underperforming that number by 1.28 goals — a gap that traces straight back to J. Saros, who stopped 1.28 goals above what an average goaltender would have on that workload. That's not a Nashville defense that bent but didn't break; it's a goaltender who kept a blowout off the board.
The report card backs up the eye test. Nashville's offense grades out an F, its defense a D-, and its transition game an F as well — both teams went 0-for-their-power-plays, so special teams don't separate them, but 5-on-5 play does. The real red flag for Nashville is transition: the Predators allowed 30 rush shots worth 2.42 expected goals, and that pressure showed up in every period, not just once. That's the actual concern coming out of this loss — not the power play, not the goaltending, but how easily Tampa Bay got through the neutral zone.