The Tampa Bay Lightning have scored power-play goals in their past five games, including Anthony Cirelli‘s tally in the second period of Thursday’s 6-4 victory over the visiting Winnipeg Jets at Benchmark International Arena. But does that mean that the Lightning power play, so successful over the past few seasons, is back to a high level? And why the recent surge after a slow start?

The Lightning will face the Nashville Predators Saturday afternoon, having improved to 7-for-43 on the power play this season, which is a paltry 16.3% conversion rate. They rank 27th.

Lightning Power-Play Personnel

Through 12 games, Tampa Bay (8-3-1) has no games in which they’ve scored multiple power-play goals. Last season, the Lightning had 11 multi-goal PPG games and 12 the season before. It’s a small sample in 2026-27, but not an insignificant one; this far into the season, the team usually would be expected to have at least one.

The personnel pattern for the Lightning this season looks similar to 2025-26, at least up front. Jake Guentzel (4:58 average power-play ice time per game this season), Nikita Kucherov (4:50) and Brayden Point (4:45) are the three busiest forwards on the man advantage, just as they were last season. But one big difference is that Brandon Hagel (4:14 average PP TOI) is getting almost twice the ice with the advantage as he did last season (2:11).

Cirelli took a career-high 77 power-play faceoffs last season, winning 68% (with 53 wins to 24 losses), and he’s on pace to surpass that by a wide margin this season. The 10-year veteran has won 25 of 41 PP faceoffs in 2026-27, or 61%. Of the Lightning’s seven power-play goals this season, five came after a faceoff win, including Thursday when Cirelli’s win on the dot led to his goal. Cirelli’s average PP TOI is 1:52 so far, up from 1:13 last season; he sometimes takes faceoffs then gives way to another forward, usually Guentzel or Hagel.

What Is Different Lately

Most frequently, some combination among Guentzel, Cirelli, Hagel, Point and Kucherov will eat up the bulk of man-advantage time among the Lightning forwards. Pontus Holmberg and Gage Goncalves, each of whom collected assists on Cirelli’s goal against the Jets, are often on the second unit, as is Conor Geekie.

The big difference lately has been in the back, where defenseman Charle-Edouard D’Astous has played a bigger role over the past five games.

For every full power play (a man advantage that either resulted in a goal or lasted the full two minutes without a goal) that we analyzed this season, D’Astous has been on the ice to start the power play on 10 of the Lightning’s past 15 chances. He has been working most often with Point and Kucherov — plus two from the group of Cirelli, Hagel and Guentzel — in those situations.

And the 28-year-old D’Astous has been on ice for each of those five PP goals over the past five games. Veteran John Carlson, who joined the team this season via free agency, mostly played with the top PP unit to start the season, and remains a factor as the team has moved away from Victor Hedman quarterbacking the unit. Hedman, the Lightning captain in his 18th NHL season, is averaging just 13 seconds with the man advantage after being the team’s most reliable D-man on the unit for years.

Can Lightning Keep Trending Upward?

Despite the recent surge, the Lightning are still a ways off from displaying the type of power-play prowess that was a given in recent seasons. Overall, the Lightning’s power play ranked third in 2022-23, first in 2023-24 and fifth in 2024-25 before falling to No. 17 (at 20.7%) last season.

But the past five games would seem to indicate that, yes, slowly, the Lightning are starting to look like the team that terrorized the league on its power play for most of the past several years. Saturday’s game against the Predators, whose penalty kill ranks fourth in the league at 88.1% is another chance to prove it.