Montreal Canadiens (48-24-10, in the Atlantic Division) vs. Tampa Bay Lightning (50-26-6, in the Atlantic Division)<\/p>\n
Tampa, Florida; Wednesday, 7 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
LINE: Lightning -171, Canadiens +143; over\/under is 5.5<\/p>\n
NHL PLAYOFFS FIRST ROUND: Series tied 2-2<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Montreal Canadiens are in a 2-2 series tie in the first round of the NHL Playoffs. The teams meet Sunday for the ninth time this season. The Lightning won the previous matchup 3-2. Brandon Hagel scored two goals in the victory.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay has gone 50-26-6 overall with an 18-9-3 record in Atlantic Division games. The Lightning have given up 229 goals while scoring 286 for a +57 scoring differential.<\/p>\n
Montreal is 48-24-10 overall with an 18-10-2 record against the Atlantic Division. The Canadiens have a 21-7-6 record in one-goal games.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Nikita Kucherov has 44 goals and 86 assists for the Lightning. Hagel has seven goals and one assist over the past 10 games.<\/p>\n
Lane Hutson has 12 goals and 66 assists for the Canadiens. Juraj Slafkovsky has four goals and five assists over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Lightning: 4-4-2, averaging 2.4 goals, 4.3 assists, 7.1 penalties and 18.2 penalty minutes while giving up 2.9 goals per game.<\/p>\n
Canadiens: 5-4-1, averaging 2.4 goals, 4.6 assists, 6.5 penalties and 16.5 penalty minutes while giving up 2.7 goals per game.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Lightning: Charle-Edouard D’Astous: day to day (undisclosed), Victor Hedman: out (personal), Pontus Holmberg: out (upper-body).<\/p>\n
Canadiens: Patrik Laine: out (abdomen), Noah Dobson: out (thumb).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Associated Press Montreal Canadiens (48-24-10, in the Atlantic Division) vs. Tampa Bay Lightning (50-26-6, in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-250811","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\/250811","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=250811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}