Lightning defender, who hasn't shut up all summer, takes another shot at the Maple Leafs

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Matt Garland
October 21, 2023 (12:22)

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The Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning face off tonight for the first time since their first round playoff series. The Maple Leafs defeated Tampa in six games to earn their first series win since 2004.

Lightning defenceman Mikhail Sergachev was asked before the game what he recalls from the series last spring.

Probably that we lost and (had) a long summer, so, yeah, that's probably what they feel every year.

From Sergachev comments you can tell the loss to Toronto still pisses him off. The defeat broke Tampa's three year consecutive run to the Stanley Cup final, winning the title in 2020 and 2021 and losing to Colorado in 2022.

The 25 year old Sergachev has a had a poor start to the new season. He is logging big minutes averaging almost 23 minutes a night but has only produced one assist and is an ugly -7 through five games.

The Lightning come into the game with a record of 2-2-1 on the season without their backbone Andrei Vasilevskiy. The star netminder's replacement Jonas Johansson haven't been great in his four starts, posting a 3.53 GAA and .894 save percentage but the team is still managing to remain over .500 to begin the new campaign.

Toronto had a hot start to the new season winning their first two games but have faltered this week losing both of their games to the Florida Panthers and Chicago Blackhawks.

It will be interesting to see tonight if Toronto can make Sergachev pay for his comments or will the Lightning look to respond from the early playoff exit last spring, but if nothing else, it should be a very chippy game considering Sergachev won't stop running his mouth.