{"id":603553,"date":"2026-04-24T11:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/603553\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T11:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:57:11","slug":"canadiens-rally-around-dach-heading-into-game-3-against-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/603553\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens rally around Dach heading into Game 3 against Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Game 1 was also decided in overtime, when forward Juraj Slafkovsky<\/a>\u00a0completed his first Stanley Cup Playoffs hat trick in overtime for a 4-3 Canadiens win in the series opener Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly thought we dominated that game,\u201d Struble said of Game 2. \u201cWe had the lead most of the game. Obviously there were a couple of chances we didn\u2019t convert on, maybe turnovers, this and that. I think we\u2019re in a great spot, nothing really changes in terms of the series. They were able to get one in OT, we got one in OT, but I think our performance has been better these past two games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hotly-contested physical series continues with Game 3 at Bell Centre on Friday (7 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, HBO MAX, The Spot) with Montreal playing the role of the good guys on home ice now that Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper embraced the opposite for the Lightning when he said after Game 2, “Somebody’s got to be the villain, I guess.”<\/p>\n

The teams combined for 23 penalties worth 52 minutes Tuesday; the Lightning were called for 12 penalties (27 minutes).<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they want to think that, that\u2019s OK,” Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj<\/a>\u00a0said. “But we\u2019re here. We\u2019re ready for whatever they have to offer for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forward Josh Anderson and defensemen Mike Matheson<\/a> and Noah Dobson<\/a>\u00a0were not on the ice for practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anderson went to the dressing room in the third period Tuesday after he was hit from behind by Tampa Bay forward Scott Sabourin<\/a>\u00a0but returned to play in overtime. Matheson played the first two games of the series and Dobson is out with an upper-body injury. There was no update on any of the three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Game 1 was also decided in overtime, when forward Juraj Slafkovsky\u00a0completed his first Stanley Cup Playoffs hat trick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-603553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}