{"id":255493,"date":"2026-05-02T15:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T15:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/255493\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T15:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T15:09:20","slug":"lightning-edge-canadiens-in-ot-force-game-7-in-eastern-1st-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/255493\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning edge Canadiens in OT, force Game 7 in Eastern 1st Round"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jakub Dobes<\/a> made 32 saves for the Canadiens, the No. 3 seed in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to pick ourselves up and do that again,\u201d Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. \u201cWe played an excellent game. We were good. There\u2019s no panic; we just had everyone going tonight. It\u2019s unfortunate you don\u2019t get the result, but what a hockey game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tightly contested series has had four games go to overtime, including each of the first three. All six games have been decided by one goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the better team for pretty much most of that game, we just didn\u2019t score,\u201d Canadiens forward Nick Suzuki<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cI thought Vasilevskiy kind of won them that game. I thought everyone played a great game, we just didn\u2019t get the result, and we\u2019re ready to go down to Tampa and win Game 7.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ivan Demidov<\/a>\u2019s penalty for goalie interference with 3:18 remaining in the third period nearly proved costly for Montreal, but Dobes made a right pad save on Brayden Point<\/a>\u2019s one-timer from the slot on the ensuing power play.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously the goalies were perfect and near perfect,\u201d Canadiens forward Jake Evans<\/a> said. \u201cTampa\u2019s playing for their lives, we\u2019re playing to get to the next round, so everyone\u2019s getting in shot lanes, everyone\u2019s making it hard and not giving up those second chances or those tips. We\u2019ve just got to find a way to put a couple more in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guentzel drove a shot off the left post on Tampa Bay\u2019s third power play of the game at 6:22 of the third, moments after Kucherov hit the left post.<\/p>\n

Dobes gave the Lightning an early scoring opportunity when he mishandled the puck behind the net. Yanni Gourde<\/a> stripped the puck but fell as he came out front and his backhand completely missed a wide-open net at 2:25 of the first period.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay came close to scoring at 5:40 of the second when the puck slid between Dobes\u2019 pads and was heading into the net before Phillip Danault<\/a>\u00a0cleared it off the goal line.<\/p>\n

Vasilevskiy made a pair of saves on Demidov on a Montreal power play at 18:35 of the second period.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the best goaltender in the world for a reason,\u201d Guentzel said. \u201cHe gives us a chance every night and some of the saves he made were just incredible and obviously that was a big-time performance by him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jakub Dobes made 32 saves for the Canadiens, the No. 3 seed in the Atlantic. \u201cWe have to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-255493","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\/255493","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=255493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}