First of all, congratulations to Cole Caufield, who became the first Montreal Canadiens player since 1990 to score 50 goals in a season. The tally came in the second period, and, until the closing two minutes of the third period, was the only goal of the game.
Much of the rest of the contest was dominated by rough play, post-whistle altercations, and power-play chances (especially for the Canadiens). At one point, Montreal received five consecutive power plays. For the game, the Habs had seven, while the Lightning got four. All but two of those 11 power-play chances came in the opening 40 minutes.
With so much special teams play, there wasn’t much flow to those first two periods. In particular, the Lightning had very little possession time and generated few shots or scoring chances. The Lightning’s penalty kill was outstanding, however, denying all seven Montreal opportunities.
The third period was the Lightning’s best. They added pace to their game and forced the Canadiens to play more in the defensive zone. The Lightning produced several good looks, notably on their lone third-period power-play chance, but couldn’t tie the game until they pulled Andrei Vasilevskiy for an extra attacker. The Lightning didn’t have their six-on-five unit on the ice initially, but a different set of players did well to maintain possession in the offensive zone. That allowed the Lightning to get Vasilevskiy to the bench and sub in several of their top offensive skaters. Eventually, Charle-Edouard D’Astous won a puck battle in the corner and nudged it to Gage Goncalves behind the net. Goncalves passed to Nikita Kucherov at the bottom of the right circle, and Kucherov set up Darren Raddysh for a right-circle one-timer that beat Jakub Dobes on the stick side at 18:09.
But the Habs answered 47 seconds later. Following a Montreal dump-in, Kucherov stopped the puck along the board and slid it behind the Lightning net. J.J. Moser attempted to pass the puck to Erik Cernak, but Nick Suzuki intercepted it and threw it to the front of the net. Juraj Slafkovsky one-timed it in at 18:56.
The Lightning have lost the first three games on the road trip and are now in third place in the division. They’ll look to finish the trip on a better note when they visit Boston on Saturday afternoon.
Lightning Radio Three Stars of the Game (as selected by Pat Maroon):
- Cole Caufield — Canadiens. 50th goal.
- Nick Suzuki — Canadiens. Two assists.
- Andrei Vasilevskiy — Lightning. 19 saves.
