FINAL | Stanley Cup Final, Game 1 | Monday June 28, 2021

Lightning lead series 1-0

Canadiens Lineup

Tyler Toffoli – Nick Suzuki – Cole Caufield

Artturi Lehkonen – Phillip Danault – Brendan Gallagher

Paul Byron – Jesperi Kotkaniemi – Josh Anderson

Jake Evans – Eric Staal – Corey Perry

Ben Chiarot – Shea Weber

Joel Edmundson – Jeff Petry

Erik Gustafsson – Jon Merrill

Carey Price – Jake Allen

Tomas Tatar, Michael Frolik, Charlie Lindgren, Brett Kulak, Alexander Romanov, Joel Armia

Alex Belzile, Laurent Dauphin, Lukas Vejdemo, Jesse Ylonen, Cale Fleury, Otto Leskinen, Xavier Ouellet, Cayden Primeau, Michael McNiven

Jonathan Drouin (undisclosed)

Dominique Ducharme

Game Report

Was it an omen when Brendan Gallagher fell stepping on to the ice for warmups? Shea Weber stepped on a puck too and took a shot during warmups that hit Carey Price near the throat. Maybe not a bad omen but things were not going according to script.

When the puck drop to open the Stanley Cup Finals, it was abundantly clear that the Lightning were well schooled and prepared. Lightning head coach Jon Cooper had done his homework, preparing a strategy to exploit the Canadiens vulnerabilities while taking away their strengths.

While isolating at home, Dominique Ducharme has taken every opportunity to remind us that as interim head coach that he is still in charge and that includes preparing the game plan. It appears that Ducharme was less thorough in his analysis and preparation.

While the focus of the Canadiens was to be physical with Tampa, the Lightning didn’t show any signs of being intimidated, dishing back the punishment. Hits in the game were recorded as a whopping 58-57 for the Canadiens. 

Cooper put in place the means to deconstruct the Canadiens attack. Montreal didn’t get anywhere near the slot area in the Tampa zone until the dying minutes of the game. High danger scoring chances favored the Lightning. 

The Lightning did a good job disrupting Canadiens offence at Tampa’s blueline, creating turnovers that three times led to goals for the home side. Tampa activated their defence far more than they have in three previous series, taking a page out of the playbook of the Golden Knights, who had generated offence from their rearguards.

Lightning skaters were helping Cooper to check off each item in the list including putting an end to the Canadiens successful penalty-killing streak stopped at 32 opportunities. Even while leading 4-1 Cooper sent out five forwards to score a power-play goal and eliminate the narrative about the perfect streak by Montreal penalty-killers.

The Lightning also managed to cover for their Vezina-caliber goaltender who did not look sharp for the first half of the game. It was a rather easy night for Andrei Vasilevskiy who only had to make 18 saves and few from scoring areas.

With last change, coach Cooper effectively controlling the matchups ensuring that the Canadiens checking line led by Phillip Danault was matched against his third line centred by Yanni Gourde. If that head-to-head matchup continues, the Canadiens should take advantage if Danault and company can play a more offensive game.

Although this game got out of reach midway through the third period, Carey Price was outstanding keeping his team closer than they deserved. Price made two sensational saves on Steven Stamkos and Tyler Johnson.

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