Did the Lightning just complete the most pitiful playoff performance in sports history? There’s a case.
Nikita Kucherov and the Lightning were swept out of the playoffs. By Neil Greenberg Neil Greenberg Reporter analyzing advanced sports statistics for The Washington Post Email Bio Follow April 17 at 10:16 AM Maybe they choked, maybe they were outplayed or maybe it was a little bit of both but the Tampa Bay Lightning, this year’s Presidents’ Trophy winner with an NHL record-tying 62 wins during the regular season, were swept out of the playoffs in the first round by the Columbus Blue Jackets.
— Cody Elias April 17, 2019 “You have a historic regular season doing what we did and have basically a historic playoff in defeat,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said after Game 4. “The guys battled hard. Six days in April, Columbus played better than we did. That was it.”First-round sweeps in the NHL are rare. Since 1987, the first year the NHL extended the best-of-five series in the first round to a best-of-seven, a first-round sweep has occurred 13 percent of the time.
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