On first glance, the idea of Darren Raddysh, a defenseman with all of seven NHL goals, filling the role of one of the most prolific power-play scorers of this generation might seem crazy.
But as the preseason winds down, the Lightning are still looking for solutions to replacing Steven Stamkos on a power-play unit that was the league’s best last season. And they plan on test driving Raddysh in the left circle, an experiment that starting with Wednesday’s 2-1 overtime preseason loss to the Panthers.
“That’s what the preseason is for,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said pre-game. “We’ve tried a plethora of guys there just to give ourselves some different looks and see what we have. We’ve still got 10 days before our first game, and so it’s when a lot of your regulars are going to be in the games together, this is when you now get to see how things work.”
Most of the 28-year-old Raddysh’s power-play minutes at the NHL level have come up top as the defenseman quarterbacking the second-team unit, and he gained significant experience there last season with Mikhail Sergachev missing time with injuries.
During training camp, Raddysh has shared that role with newcomer J.J. Moser, but also shifted down to the left circle on occasion.
Need for a right-handed shot
Over the past several years, the Lightning have been a team that’s mostly left-handed. And while they opened camp trying to see if Nikita Kucherov could move to the left circle to give Brandon Hagel his spot from the right circle, the look was convoluted throughout. Kucherov had to skate more on his offside instead of surveying the ice, and it included moving Brayden Point from the bumper to the left side of the net front as the unit’s only right-handed shot.
The Lightning have also given right-handed shooting forward Cam Atkinson a look on the first unit in the left circle, but Raddysh is promising simply because he has one of the strongest right-handed slap shots on the team — perhaps in the league.
Raddysh hasn’t had the chance to really showcase his offensive ability at the NHL level. He did score six goals last season, but only one on the power play. What Raddysh does have is one of the fastest shots in the league; one was recorded at 102.4 mph last season, which at the time was the fastest recorded by NHL Edge stat reporting. And his 27 shots on goal that were in the 95- to 100-mph range put him in the 95th percentile of all defensemen.
He showed that shot in Wednesday’s game, specifically in a second-period 4-on-3 power play in which he rifled two slap shots from the left circle and another from the high slot that were stopped by Panthers goaltender Spencer Knight.
“They zipped it around,” Cooper said after the game. “I think they passed up a ton of shots. We shot a lot on that 4-on-3 but they weren’t shooting as much on the 5-on-4. But I thought as each one went, they were starting to get a little bit more comfortable.”
New look, different angle
Raddysh said he hasn’t played the left circle on the power play regularly since his junior hockey days with the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League. He did see some time there during his first AHL season with the Rockford IceHogs in 2017-18 and played the spot once on the second-power play unit last season.
Raddysh was told during the summer by assistant coach Jeff Halpern, who runs the Lightning power play, that they might use him in the left circle and advised him to adjust his training to include practicing shots from there.
“It’s mostly just the angle and just maybe a little bit of timing,” Raddysh said. “You’ve got to kind of go up and down compared to side to side. So it’s just kind of being in the right spot and waiting for Kuch to get the puck over to you.”
Filling a void
Whether that can translate into what Stamkos, who scored 19 of his 41 goals last season on the power play, did along the left circle remains to be seen, but Stamkos’ shot was unique. It was certainly fast, but it wasn’t a thumper. It almost whipped off his blade. Stamkos often said his best one-timers were shots he barely felt hit his blade.
Even without Stamkos, the Lightning’s top power-play unit has three star players in Kucherov, Point and defenseman Victor Hedman. But having Stamkos on the left circle allowed the Lightning to spread the ice with goal scorers on all sides, especially with the way Kucherov could feed circle-to-circle passes to Stamkos for his patented one-timer.
To think Raddysh can step in right away and duplicate Stamkos’ production would be foolish. But if he can make his powerful right-shot one-timer at least a legitimate scoring threat, the Lightning power play can flourish.
Even though Tampa Bay’s power play was 0-for-3 in 5:46 of man advantage time Wednesday, Cooper thought it was a step forward.
“It’s going to take some time; we’ve obviously lost a staple of our power play that has been here a long time,” he said. “But I’m not judging it by how many goals we are scoring right now. I’m judging how the feel is, how they look, are they getting chances, and I think each game has gotten better and I was OK with it tonight.”
