MONTREAL — One would imagine the Tampa Bay Lightning would have taken it in a heartbeat had someone before the series informed them Montreal’s dangerous top line would be pointless at five-on-five through the three opening games.
One would also imagine their stunned reaction when also informed they’d be trailing their first-round series with the Canadiens two games to one anyway.
So it begs the question, why are the favored Lighting trailing this series then?
“Well, there’s three overtime games and we’ve lost two of them,’’ Tampa head coach Jon Cooper said after Friday night’s 3-2 overtime loss at a raucous Bell Centre. “I thought out of the three games, this was our worst game for us from start to finish. It was fortunate for us that we took this to overtime.’’
As Cooper added, they gave up three clear breakaways from center ice, which is the kind of breakdowns you don’t associate with an excellent defensive team such as the Bolts.
“In this one here, they probably deserved that a little bit more than we did,’’ Cooper said of the Habs, who delighted an incredible Bell Centre crowd with the overtime win.
As close as this series has been, and it sure does smell like a seven-gamer, Andrei Vasilevskiy saved their bacon as long as he humanly could Friday night with breakaway saves on Ivan Demidov in the second period and Josh Anderson in the third period to keep the game tied.
But he was screened on the overtime winner from Lane Hutson.
On this night, No. 88 needed more help.
“Well I thought they had the majority of the chances, I thought Vasy gave us a chance to win the game,’’ said Lightning center Brayden Point. “Some D-zone turnovers and the puck goes in. We need to be better.’’
It really was un-Tampa-like. They were the third-stringiest team in the NHL this season.
“We weren’t (as) sharp as we needed to be, for sure, we talked about it,’’ said veteran leader Ryan McDonagh. “You know giving up breakaways and odd-man (breaks), we haven’t done a lot of that in this series and tonight it certainly got away from us defensively. Hats off to Vasy, he gave us a chance to get to overtime.
“But ultimately, I think the right team won tonight,’’ he added. “And that’s on us.’’
Much of the next 48 hours will be spent by Tampa finding some fixes. But there’s also a reality seeping in now, three games into this series: the Lightning are the slower team. They’re not a slow team at all against the majority of teams in the NHL. They just look slow at times against this speedy Habs squad. And that presents a rather challenging problem.
“They do have a ton of speed and a ton of skill, we can’t get on the wrong side of them because they make you pay,’’ Point said. “We need better structure to limit that for sure.’’
That was a postgame theme for Tampa Bay.
“If you don’t manage the puck, that’s going to lead to their team showcasing their speed and skill,’’ McDonagh said. “If you don’t stay in structure, you don’t close fast in the D-zone, you’re going to spend a lot of time there. And again, you’re going to take a lot of penalties. A lot of things we’ve been preaching and we didn’t check enough of those boxes tonight.’’
If Tampa is looking for positives, the Bolts, as mentioned, have held Nick Suzuki’s top line with Juraj Slafkovský and Cole Caufield pointless at five-on-five in the series, and in Game 3, killed all four Montreal power plays. The Lightning have made adjustments to their PK. For one, they appear to be playing Hutson more aggressively up high and giving him less time and space.
So those things are good. But they’re down in the series.
“There’s tons to build off from the game,’’ Cooper said. “We’ve held some pretty good players to limited chances in this series. We’re just not capitalizing on the way we think we can do some things. You know, we’re three games in now. We’ve got a pretty good feel for each other. We’ve got a pretty good feel for what the environment is like in this building. But, our execution has to be … we have to elevate now.’’
The Bolts were picked by most to win this series despite tying Montreal in the standings at 106 points. Their veteran experience and perceived better depth up front were reasons to think that.
But interestingly enough, on this night, it’s Montreal’s fourth line, centered by Kirby Dach, that produced three goals while the top line continued to struggle.
So far in this series, Montreal’s winning the depth battle.
In the meantime, somebody’s got to start scoring for Tampa, not named Brandon Hagel. He scored his fourth of the series Friday night, and Point finally got on the board in the series on the power play, but the Bolts need more from their top guys.
Nikita Kucherov was held to one shot on goal Friday night. Cooper had him with Anthony Cirelli and Hagel on a loaded-up line; the same three finished Game 2 together. But Kucherov was rather quiet in Game 3. He had a huge tying goal in Game 2, but overall, this hasn’t been Hart Trophy-caliber Kucherov yet.
“I thought we passed way too many opportunities that we had to be able to generate some things,’’ Cooper said, generally speaking about his offense.
“You can tic tac (toe) your way down the ice all you want, (but) at some point, you got to shoot it at the net. That definitely was not on our agenda for some of our night.’’
Limited to 17 shots on goal, the NHL’s fourth-highest scoring team in the regular season hasn’t free-wheeled a whole bunch in this series. Which is expected to some degree, it’s the playoffs when the hockey tightens up. But Friday night is not nearly good enough offensively for a team of Tampa’s talent and offensive pedigree.
There was major line shuffling overall by Cooper on this night, not just Kucherov, but tweaks to three lines, which ended up looking a little different than what was shown in pregame warmup. Perhaps a little playoff gamesmanship there.
Whatever the case, the line tweaks didn’t produce the desired result. So it’s back to the drawing board before Game 4 here Sunday night.
Make no mistake, Tampa’s in one here.
“They’re a really good team, we’re a really good team, it’s going to be tight right to the very end,’’ McDonagh said.
“We’re definitely still in the series,’’ said Point. “But the next one is so important. We know we can be better. We got to learn from our mistakes here tonight. We got to show better next game.’’