Smith well enough to play, but Niittymaki gets the call

Posted Oct 12, 2009 by Erik Erlendsson

Updated Oct 12, 2009 at 01:20 PM

TAMPA - Antero Niittymaki played well in his first start, so he gets the call tonight although Mike Smith feels well enough to play.

Niittymaki will start in back-to-back games tonight as the Lightning host in-state rival Florida. There will be no goaltending controversy, however.

“He played well,” Lightning coach Rick Tocchet said of Niittymaki, who picked up Tampa Bay’s first victory of the season on Saturday. “This is the Tampa Bay Lightning, not the Smitty Lightning or the Vinny Lightning. Nitty deserves to play, so he’s playing. I mean, Smitty is going to play a ton for us.”

Smith, who missed the past two months of last season with a concussion, was run over during Thursday’s home opener against New Jersey by Ryan Malone and Jamie Langunbrunner, leaving Smith with a cut near his right eye, a sore back and a stiff neck. But he’s practiced the past two days and said he’s fine to play, which he admitted is a bit of a surprise considering the violence of the collision.

“Must be all that summer work I did,” Smith said with a smirk. “I didn’t really practice getting hit by a truck, but . . .

“I actually looked at the tape, slowed it down a bit. It felt like it looked. Like I said before, I thought I broke every bone in my back. I felt like everything popped and cracked, so I wasn’t even thinking about my head I just thought I busted my back up. Which is a good thing I guess.”

Smith said he also has no problem sitting out tonight’s game after watching Nittymaki help the team pick up the team’s first victory.

“He deserves to be in there, he got us our first win this year,” Smith said. “He played really well and made some big stops at key times. If this team is going to win this year it’s going to be because of great goaltending, not just from myself but from Nitty, too. So it’s important to have two guys that can get in there and play well. If one guy is hurt or one guy is not playing well as well as they can, the team is confident in either guy, so that’s important.”

MISFIRING: Four games into the season, the combo of Vinny Lecavalier and Alex Tanguay have combined to score zero goals.

While it is still very early in the season, both players realize how the stat line reads.

“We’ve been getting shots and have had lots of opportunities, they just haven’t gone in,” Lecavalier said. “If we weren’t getting the chances I would be worried.”

Tanguay, typically a slow starter, said he’s feeling a bit “rattled” by the number of chances that he’s missed, but like his linemate he’s encouraged by the chances the duo is getting.

“I know they will start going in,” Tanguay said. “The chances are there, we are playing better each game, the team is playing better and if we had buried some of our chances we might be 3-1. So we just need to keep trying.”

SAME LINEUP: Tocchet did not alter the lineup from Saturday’s win, but said it didn’t much factor into things remaining the same.

I’m not really a guy that says we won so the lineup stays the same,ll he said.

Even though Kurtis Foster is ready to play, Lukas Krajicek gets the start for the second straight game.