Here are three things to watch in Game 4:<\/p>\n
1. Getting the Point across<\/p>\n
How close has this series been? Through three games, Montreal has scored nine goals, Tampa Bay eight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of those Lightning goals, one of the more important ones going forward in the series was scored by Brayden Point<\/a>\u00a0on the power play at 7:42 of the first period for a 1-1 tie in Game 3. The Lightning are hoping it sparks a resurgence from the struggling forward, who has just that one point through the first three games.<\/p>\n The forward has averaged nearly a point per game (0.95) in his NHL postseason career (45 goals, 45 assists in 95 games).\u00a0<\/p>\n “He’s got to get going, no question,” Cooper said. “And he knows that.<\/p>\n “We’ve talked at length about it. He’s at his best when he’s moving his feet and commanding the puck and skating with it. There were times last game where he was uncharacteristically giving it up a little early, but there’s no question that goal took weight off his shoulders.<\/p>\n “I think the best of Brayden Point is yet to come. And I think we’ll see it tonight.”<\/p>\n 2. Bell Centre breakout?<\/p>\n The Canadiens aren’t panicking yet that their top line of Nick Suzuki<\/a>, Cole Caufield<\/a> and Juraj Slafkovsky<\/a>\u00a0have zero combined points at even strength.<\/p>\n Given that they’re ahead in the series, so far so good, but how long can it last?<\/p>\n “I think we’re getting closer,” Suzuki said. “We’ve had some good looks. Cole came close to scoring in OT in Game 3, for example.<\/p>\n “We’ve just got to stick with what we’re doing. That’s a good team over there, so you can’t let yourself get frustrated.”<\/p>\n 3. Can anyone hold a lead?<\/p>\n Not in this series. At least not yet.<\/p>\n Each game has seen a team come from behind to win. The previous postseason series to feature a comeback win through each of the first four games was the 2019 first round between the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets, a series that had it happen on five consecutive occasions and won by the Blues in six.<\/p>\n “It’s definitely game management,” coach Martin St. Louis said. “You’ve got to take care of the puck. And you’ve got to still want it. You can’t just give them the puck and say ‘All right, we’ll defend hard. You still have to keep playing.’<\/p>\n “Managing the puck in the offensive zone is huge. If you can spend time in there, they can’t score.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are three things to watch in Game 4: 1. Getting the Point across How close has this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":{"0":"post-630491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-montreal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}