FanHouse JohanHolmqvist

The Tampa Bay Lightning managed to squeak into the playoffs, but were held back by their lack of quality goaltending.

After dealing for Marc Denis last off-season, the Bolts thought they had solved their goaltending problems. Why they thought a goalie that even COLUMBUS didn't want was going to help them, I have no idea.

Anyway, Denis faltered and was injured, so backup Johan Holmqvist managed to step in and provide the Bolts with a warm body for the majority of the season.

For his service, Holmqvist was rewarded with a one-year contract:

"As we said at the end of the season, Johan Holmqvist is one piece of the puzzle for us in net, and it was one of our top priorities this off-season to get him re-signed at a number that made sense for us," Lightning general manager Jay Feaster said in a statement.

"By signing a one-year deal, Johan has demonstrated that he intends to build on last year's performance and firmly establish himself - once and for all - as a legitimate No. 1 goalie in the NHL."

So, the Lightning think Holmqvist is a #1 goalie in the NHL, do they?

While Marc Denis had the worst SV% (88.3%) among qualified goaltenders, Holmqvist was not much better, with a 89.3SV%. This was 'good' for 6th worst in the NHL.

Yes, Holmqvist was better than Denis, but he wasn't very good at all. If the Lightning are going to put their eggs in Holmqvist's basket, they are not solving the real issue of poor goaltending that hurt them all season.

Not only are the Lightning pinning their hopes on a poor goaltender, but they are still stuck with Marc Denis and his contract that counts $2,867,000 towards the cap for each of the next two seasons.

The Lightning would have been better off saying "Thanks for the help, but we need somebody better."

For the most part, the media focus of the Devils/Lightning series has been squarely on the men behind the masks, goaltenders Martin Brodeur and Johan Holmqvist, two guys whose numbers and playoff experiences couldn't be much more disparate. The conventional wisdom was (and probably still is) that Brodeur would not need to be at his best for New Jersey to prevail, and that Holmqvist would have to play the best hockey of his career for Tampa to even have a chance.

Two games into the series, however, the two goalies' numbers are looking pretty similar -- both have one win, Brodeur has the better goals against average and Holmqvist has the better save percentage. With the series headed back to Florida knotted at one, as ridiculous as it may sound, the question bears asking: which goalie is under more pressure?

Brodeur, coming off a record-setting, Vezina-caliber regular season in which he almost single-handedly secured the Conference's second seed for his team, will be the first to tell you he has to be better than he's been through the first two games -- "I have to be the difference," he said. Sounds like pressure to me, though it's the kind of situation -- self-imposed or not -- in which the three-time Stanley Cup winner seems to thrive.

At the other end of the ice, no one outside of maybe the Tampa locker room even gave Holmqvist a chance at stealing this series from the Devils. He's really got nothing to lose and everything to gain. He should just go out there and have fun -- pick your cliche, it applies.

Game Two was a wake-up call for the Devils and a shot in the arm for the Lightning. The series is now a best-of-five, and the pressure is mounting ... but maybe not for whom you'd have expected.

In a late entry for Understatement of the Year, Tampa Bay Lightning captain Tim Taylor said of last night's 7-2 loss at home to the Florida Panthers, "Obviously we overlooked this game." Um, yeah.

The deuce that Tampa was able to tally after the Panthers had put a touchdown on the board (and kicked the extra point) was purely and ineffectively cosmetic, and now instead of tonight's game against the Atlanta Thrashers deciding the Southeast Division Champion, it may well decide who the Bolts will face in the first round of the playoffs -- the Thrashers or the New Jersey Devils.

In his postgame presser, Lightning coach John Tortorella said of his team's melt-down, "Write what you want to write. I know what this team is. And I know what this team is going to do when the playoffs start."

With the coach's permission, then, here's what I want to write -- Tampa's number one goalie, Johan Holmqvist, has a 2.88 goals against average and a .891 save percentage, which puts him 30th out of 44 goalies in the NHL in the former category and 38th out of 44 in the latter. Oh, and he's never played a minute of postseason hockey in the NHL. Neither, for that matter, has Holmqvist's backup, Marc Denis (who is 38th in the League in GAA and dead last in save percentage).

But here's the kicker -- this season against thir possible first-round opponents, Tampa is 5-2-0 against Atlanta (outscoring the Thrashers 25-14 in those games) and 3-1 against New Jersey (outscoring the Devils 10-6). Maybe that's why Tortorella isn't too worried. Or maybe he knows that last year's Conn Smythe winner as playoff MVP, Cam Ward of the Cup Champ Hurricanes, had the League's 49th best GAA and 45th best save percentage heading into his first playoffs last year. Either way, it seems Coach Torts might know something the rest of us don't ... but we'll all know soon enough.