Colton's baseball career leads to playoff success with Lightning

I wonder how much that transfers."Murphy coached Colton at The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, in the 2013-14 season, when Colton led the team with 25 goals in 24 games as a high school junior.But it was while watching him as a third baseman on the Taft baseball team that Murphy developed his theory on why Colton has been able to shine in the big moments."He has high hockey IQ but he doesn't overthink it," Murphy said. He was really good at baseball so it's a natural … those mental and physical skills have carried over to serve him really well in his hockey career."Colton said he can see how baseball helped him as a hockey player in the mechanics of the game."For me, just the natural instincts of seeing the ball and the hand-eye [coordination] and kind of recognizing pitches and stuff like that," he said. He scored in the Lightning's 1-0 victory against the Montreal Canadiens in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final last season that gave them the Cup, and with 3.8 seconds left in the third period for a 2-1 victory in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Second Round against the Florida Panthers on May 19.That goal helped the Lightning sweep the Panthers in the best-of-7 series and move the two-time defending Cup champions into the Eastern Conference Final, where they will play the New York Rangers or the Carolina Hurricanes."I think it's innate," said Rick Freeman, who coached Colton in 2013 with the Hamilton (New Jersey) American Legion Post 31 baseball team. The game was tied 2-2 with 3:33 remaining the third period when Colton came up big."It was a tight game … and he willed himself by a defenseman to the point where he could get a shot off and scored the game-winning goal in that game," Carlson said.It led to Colton being selected by the Lightning in the fourth round (No. 118) of the 2016 NHL Draft.He played the next two seasons at the University of Vermont, scoring 50 points (28 goals, 22 assists) in 69 games and demanding to be on the ice in the biggest moments."He's an ultimate competitor that way," said Kevin Patrick, a Vermont assistant coach during Colton's time there. … Whether it's taking the offensive face-offs down a goal needing to tie it, or defensively taking that face-off when you're up a goal and the other team has got their goalie pulled, he wanted his number called in those situations."Patrick agreed that this mentality relates directly to Colton's baseball success."I love youth baseball and I love kids playing it because there's nowhere to hide when you succeed or fail in baseball," he said.