Bolts will face a struggling Anaheim

Including three early games, there are thirteen matches on the slate this Saturday in the NHL. The Tampa Bay Lightning will welcome the Anaheim Ducks at Amalie Arena. Will the Ducks be able to cope with a painful loss in Florida last Thursday?

The Bolts are finally playing better

The Tampa Bay Lightning broke record after record during the regular season last year, but after that they didn't manage to live up to the high expectations during the Stanley Cup Play-offs. Many changes didn't take place in the summer and it was a small surprise that Tampa Bay was so disappointing in the first weeks of the new season. At the moment the Lightning are in seventh place in the Atlantic Division, although they played a couple of less games than their division rivals.

The turnaround took place a few weeks ago during the NHL Global Series, two games that the team played in Sweden against the Buffalo Sabres. After this, the Lightning humiliated the New York Rangers in Tampa, winning 9-3, but after two consecutive defeats the pressure was back on last Thursday for the game against the Chicago Blackhawks. Head coach Jon Cooper and his men won partly due to an empty-netter with 4-2 in Chicago, so they get a new chance to start an impressive winning streak, just like they did a couple of times season.

The Ducks are struggling

The season has only just started, so all teams still have a chance to qualify for the play-offs. Anaheim is a team whose main focus lies on their great defense. With John Gibson, coach Dallas Eakins has one of the best goalkeepers of the NHL and someone who can steal games for his team, as he proved once again at the beginning of this week during a victory against the St. Louis Blues. The results of Anaheim have been disappointing lately, as they lost seven of their last eight games.

Gibson will be rested tonight for the game against the Bolts, so Ryan Miller will start on behalf of the Ducks. The backup goalie has performed well so far with a savepercentage of 0.919 and averaged 2.61 goals against per game during his six appearances of this season. Last Thursday, Anaheim suffered a painful defeat against the Florida Panthers. The Ducks were in a comfortable 4-0 lead at the end of the second period, but surprisingly were still forced to play overtime. It was Aaron Ekblad who eventually completed the Panthers' comeback during OT.

The Lightning will book another home win

The Lightning are getting Nikita Kucherov back tonight, but captain Steven Stamkos is out. The Bolts have been a certainty for at least three or four goals in a long period of time over the past season and this has also been the case for almost every match during the last couple of weeks. Without Gibson in net it will be a tough task for the Ducks to take a result from Tampa. their advantage is the absence of Stamkos, but the Bolts still have enough offensive power to take the win.