Friday night\u2019s 3-2 overtime loss at a raucous Bell Centre<\/a>. \u201cI 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.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\nAs Cooper added, they gave up three clear breakaways from center ice, which is the kind of breakdowns you don\u2019t associate with an excellent defensive team such as the Bolts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this one here, they probably deserved that a little bit more than we did,\u2019\u2019 Cooper said of the Habs, who delighted an incredible Bell Centre crowd with the overtime win.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But he was screened on the overtime winner from Lane Hutson.<\/p>\n
On this night, No. 88 needed more help.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell I thought they had the majority of the chances, I thought Vasy gave us a chance to win the game,\u2019\u2019 said Lightning center Brayden Point. \u201cSome D-zone turnovers and the puck goes in. We need to be better.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
It really was un-Tampa-like. They were the third-stringiest team in the NHL this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t (as) sharp as we needed to be, for sure, we talked about it,\u2019\u2019 said veteran leader Ryan McDonagh. \u201cYou know giving up breakaways and odd-man (breaks), we haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut ultimately, I think the right team won tonight,\u2019\u2019 he added. \u201cAnd that\u2019s on us.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Much of the next 48 hours will be spent by Tampa finding some fixes. But there\u2019s also a reality seeping in now, three games into this series: the Lightning are the slower team. They\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey do have a ton of speed and a ton of skill, we can\u2019t get on the wrong side of them because they make you pay,\u2019\u2019 Point said. \u201cWe need better structure to limit that for sure.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
That was a postgame theme for Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t manage the puck, that\u2019s going to lead to their team showcasing their speed and skill,\u2019\u2019 McDonagh said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t stay in structure, you don\u2019t close fast in the D-zone, you\u2019re going to spend a lot of time there. And again, you\u2019re going to take a lot of penalties. A lot of things we\u2019ve been preaching and we didn\u2019t check enough of those boxes tonight.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
If Tampa is looking for positives, the Bolts, as mentioned, have held Nick Suzuki\u2019s top line with Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd 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.<\/p>\n
So those things are good. But they\u2019re down in the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s tons to build off from the game,\u2019\u2019 Cooper said. \u201cWe\u2019ve held some pretty good players to limited chances in this series. We\u2019re just not capitalizing on the way we think we can do some things. You know, we\u2019re three games in now. We\u2019ve got a pretty good feel for each other. We\u2019ve got a pretty good feel for what the environment is like in this building. But, our execution has to be \u2026 we have to elevate now.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But interestingly enough, on this night, it\u2019s Montreal\u2019s fourth line, centered by Kirby Dach, that produced three goals while the top line continued to struggle.<\/p>\n
So far in this series, Montreal\u2019s winning the depth battle.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, somebody\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t been Hart Trophy-caliber Kucherov yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we passed way too many opportunities that we had to be able to generate some things,\u2019\u2019 Cooper said, generally speaking about his offense.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Limited to 17 shots on goal, the NHL\u2019s fourth-highest scoring team in the regular season hasn\u2019t free-wheeled a whole bunch in this series. Which is expected to some degree, it\u2019s the playoffs when the hockey tightens up. But Friday night is not nearly good enough offensively for a team of Tampa\u2019s talent and offensive pedigree.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, the line tweaks didn\u2019t produce the desired result. So it\u2019s back to the drawing board before Game 4 here Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, Tampa\u2019s in one here.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a really good team, we\u2019re a really good team, it\u2019s going to be tight right to the very end,\u2019\u2019 McDonagh said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re definitely still in the series,\u2019\u2019 said Point. \u201cBut 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.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 One would imagine the Tampa Bay Lightning would have taken it in a heartbeat had someone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[51845,5691,135,862,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-246151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-montreal-canadiens","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-tampa","11":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","12":"tag-tampa-headlines","13":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246151","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=246151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}