Canadiens Lineup

Tyler Toffoli – Nick Suzuki – Cole Caufield

Artturi Lehkonen – Phillip Danault – Brendan Gallagher

Paul Byron – Jesperi Kotkaniemi – Josh Anderson

Joel Armia – 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,  Jake Evans

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

Here’s the shorthand version of the game summary that you might see on social media: The Canadiens got ‘Priced’ by the Tampa goalie after dominating play throughout game two. That’s far too simplistic to serve as a believable description for tonight’s game. As always, we will delve a lot deeper to unearth the true story.

Looking at the numbers the Canadiens held a lopsided advantage in shots on goal, taking 20 more shots than the Lightning. But what about the quality of Montreal’s opportunities? In that regard, high-danger scoring chances were rather even between the two teams, recorded as 7-6 for Montreal.

This type of game was reminiscent of the days of Claude Julien, shooting from anywhere and everywhere just hoping one would sneak in. And that’s just what happened for Nick Suzuki who rolled a backhander from the blueline that somehow eluded Andrei Vasilevskiy. But that’s where the Canadiens luck would end.

The stark truth is that the Canadiens have to do a much better job getting Grade-A chances on Vasilevskiy. He certainly isn’t going to be bothered by a high volume of low quality shots in this series. Canadiens skaters have just two goals over six periods in this series and that’s simply not going to cut it if they intend to make this a series.

Tampa coach Jon Cooper said that the Lightning played an unremarkable team game but got some remarkable individual performances. It’s fair to compliment Montreal’s team game but wonder where the remarkable individual performances were for the visitors in white? The Canadiens will need individuals, beyond their goaltender, to step up and deliver a productive performance.

As far as those remarkable individual performances by the Lightning? They were triggered by Canadiens mistakes. “I think these guys are very opportunistic,” said assistant coach Luke Richardson, “and very lethal offensively if you do make mistakes in certain areas, and obviously they showed that again tonight.” 

A tough shift by Jon Merrill where he made a mitt full of mistakes handed one of those opportunities for Anthony Cirelli scoring the opening goal. An unforced error by Ben Chiarot and a giveaway by Phillip Danault provided Blake Coleman the chance to score a highlight reel goal with just 0.3 seconds remaining in the second period. And miscommunication by Jeff Petry and Joel Edmundson gift-wrapped the insurance goal for Tampa.

The physical burden on the Canadiens top-4 defencemen has been enormous and tonight it showed with three of them committing costly mental mistakes. It’s simply unrealistic to expect to ice just four NHL-caliber defencemen against the Tampa Bay Lightning and not pay for it.

The Canadiens played a good hockey game tonight. But in the words of Corey Perry, “It wasn’t enough.” They will have to be even better at home and hope to create a few bounces too.

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