Hagel, with his sixth of the playoffs already, scored the go-ahead goal at 15:07 in the third period when Nikita Kucherov\u2019s shot from the half wall bounced off him and in.<\/p>\n
The goal came minutes after the Canadiens killed a 71-second 5-on-3 disadvantage to light up the Bell Centre, as Kucherov tumbled into the boards from a Jake Evans cross-check with Mike Matheson already in the penalty box.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens then jumped on the power play \u2014 and a 6-on-4 advantage with the net empty \u2014 at 17:27 with Kucherov off for slashing, but couldn\u2019t produce the equalizer.<\/p>\n
Jake Guentzel had a goal and an assist for Tampa Bay, while Kucherov and J.J. Moser added two helpers each. Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 16 shots.<\/p>\n
Cole Caufield and Zachary Bolduc replied for Montreal. Jakub Dobes made 17 saves in the first game of the series to end in regulation.<\/p>\n
The previous three games required overtime. Lane Hutson scored the Game 3 winner in a 3-2 victory Friday to give the Canadiens a 2-1 series lead after the teams split the first two games in Tampa, Fla.<\/p>\n
The series returns to the Sunshine State for Game 5 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Bolduc broke the deadlock at 10:06 in the second period after Kaiden Guhle found him with a stretch pass. He drove to the net with Lightning defenceman Darren Raddysh draped all over him as Vasilevskiy\u2019s poke check bounced off his chest and in.<\/p>\n
Caufield doubled the lead on the power play with 6:31 remaining for his first of the playoffs after a 51-goal regular season.<\/p>\n
Nick Suzuki found him alone in front to send the Bell Centre crowd \u2014 and the thousands gathered outside \u2014 into a frenzy as Caufield dropped to his knees in celebration.<\/p>\n
A chippy, chaotic end to the second ensued, with a major scrum, more penalties and a massive hit.<\/p>\n
Max Crozier, in the lineup for the first time this post-season, flattened Canadiens forward Juraj Slafkovsky at centre ice with 2:12 left in the period as the crowd let out a collective gasp. The Slovak winger stood up and laboured off the ice before heading straight down the tunnel. No penalty was called on the play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Slafkovsky returned in the third period to \u201cSlaf-kov-sky!\u201d chants, but not before Guentzel cut into the Canadiens\u2019 lead with 54 seconds remaining in the second, converting a cross-ice pass from Moser during 4-on-4 play. The Lightning almost scored again in the dying seconds off a net-front scramble.<\/p>\n
Hagel ultimately tied the game on the power play 1:40 into the third when Kucherov set him up for a tap-in after Oliver Kapanen\u2019s penalty for high-sticking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The closely contested series comes after both teams totalled 106 points in the regular season, with Tampa Bay holding the regulation-wins tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a clash between a longtime powerhouse in Tampa Bay \u2014 Stanley Cup champions in 2020 and \u201921 \u2014 and a rising Montreal team trying to follow that blueprint.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s a best-of-three to decide whether youth or experience moves on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hagel, with his sixth of the playoffs already, scored the go-ahead goal at 15:07 in the third period…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-631440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631440","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=631440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}