Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said he felt the excitement at practice before he and his players boarded a flight to Tampa.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of energy,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cConfident group, excited \u2026 just probably all the feelings you should have this time of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Louis said he was pleased to have four days between Montreal\u2019s regular-season finale, a 4-2 loss at the Philadelphia Flyers, and the postseason opener.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, yeah, it’s great,\u201d he said. \u201cI even like the way the playoff series is spread out right now; I mean, we don’t know what to do with all that time. So, we\u2019ve got to take advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s that balance between rest and working on things, and we\u2019re going to try to manage that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forward Alex Newhook<\/a>\u00a0said the Canadiens must be wary of the Lightning\u2019s ability to attack in waves. Nikita Kucherov<\/a>\u00a0finished second in the NHL with 130 points (44 goals, 86 assists), and Jake Guentzel<\/a> and Brandon Hagel<\/a>\u00a0each scored more than 35 goals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an important part of the series, no doubt,\u201d Newhook said. \u201cI think we know what a lot of those forwards are capable of once they have the puck on the rush and they have space and time. So, it\u2019s important for us and we\u2019re going to be dialed in on that.\u201d<\/p>\n One adjustment St. Louis made to his lineup at practice was reuniting the defense pair of Mike Matheson<\/a> and Alexandre Carrier<\/a>, who will return after missing Montreal\u2019s last nine regular-season games with an upper-body injury. The two were not paired this season after they played together regularly in 2024-25.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s easy to play with him,\u201d Matheson said. \u201cHe plays a very strong game and he can play beside anyone and against anyone. So, he\u2019s a big part of our team and we\u2019re fortunate to have him.\u201d<\/p>\n With Noah Dobson<\/a> expected to miss the first round because of an upper-body injury, Carrier is the only right-shot defenseman in the projected lineup. Lane Hutson<\/a> will play on the right side with Kaiden Guhle<\/a>, who was paired with Matheson on Friday, and Struble will play on the third pair with Arber Xhekaj<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen guys have gone down, we\u2019ve kind of found a way to step up,\u201d Struble said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said he felt the excitement at practice before he and his players boarded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-238118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}