Canadiens at Lightning Preview: Treacherous waters lie ahead of the Bolts don’t win tonight

Game #63 – Montreal Canadiens at Tampa Bay Lightning
Time: 7:00 PM EST
Location: Amalie Arena
Broadcast/Streaming: CBC, CITY, TVAS, BSSUN, ESPN+, HULU

Opponent’s Site: Eyes on the Prize

Preview

The Lightning kick off their relatively light March schedule with a struggling Canadiens team. A win against Arizona snapped a five-game losing streak, but they lost their next outing in a shootout to Florida, 4-3. Four has been their unlucky number of late as they’ve given up four or more goals in six of their last nine games.

Yet, the Lightning can’t look at their upcoming four days off and assume they’re going to win this one just by throwing their sticks on the ice. Their play this season has cost them the benefit of the doubt that they can beat teams below them in the standings. Vegas may have them as the favorites tonight, but they still have to go out there and play a solid 60 minutes.

Their last two games haven’t been horrible. The Philly loss came due to a seven-minute stretch of bad play. Against Buffalo, it was their usually strong penalty kill that let them down. Still, it’s been a season where Coach Cooper is explaining away losses instead of talking about how the Bolts won despite a rough stretch of play.

The Lightning have to start getting back to their “find-a-way” identity. If they give up a goal, bounce back and score the next one. The end of the season is rapidly approaching and they are running out of chances to get into the groove they need to in order to solidify their spot in the playoffs. Tonight kicks off a stretch of three winnable games before a run of tough games against the Rangers, Panthers, and Golden Knights.

If they can capture these six points, it’ll help stave off the teams chasing them. Over the next two weeks all of those games in hand will start going away, so the Bolts need to start banking points or else their path to the post season will be filled with trepidation.

Stats Match-up

Lines

Tampa Bay Lightning Projected Lines

Forwards
Brandon Hagel – Brayden Point – Nikita Kucherov
Mikey Eyssimont – Anthony Cirelli – Mitchell Chaffee
Steven Stamkos – Nick Paul – Conor Sheary

Tyler Motte – Luke Glendening – Austin Watson

Defenders
Victor Hedman – Darren Raddysh
Haydn Fleury – Erik Cernak
Calvin de Haan – Nick Perbix

Goalies
Andrei Vasilevskiy

Jonas Johansson

Montreal Canadiens Projected Lines

Forwards
Cole Caufield – Nick Suzuki – Juraj Slafkovsky

Joshua Roy – Alex Newhook – Joel Armia

Brendan Gallagher – Jake Evans – Josh Anderson

Tanner Pearson – Colin White – Jesse Ylonen

Defenders
Mike Matheson – Kaiden Guhle

Arber Xhekaj – David Savard

Jordan Harris – Johnny Kovacevic

Goalies
Sammy Montembeault

Jake Allen

The Playoff Race