The Tampa Bay Lightning battled back from one goal deficits twice against the Montreal Canadiens in Game Five of their first round series. Unfortunately, they couldn’t answer Alexandre Texier’s early third-period goal as Jakub Dobes made 17 of his 38 saves in the final frame to preserve a 3-2 Montreal win. The series heads back to Montreal with the Lightning facing elimination on Friday.
The too-long-didn’t-read version of the game is that Montreal scored all of the big momentum goals. They scored first as Brendon Gallagher, playing in his first game of the series, put home a rebound off an Alex Newhook shot just three minutes into the game. After Dominic James tied the game with his first NHL playoff goal, Kirby Dach put Montreal back ahead just 11 seconds later as he corralled his own rebound off of an Andrei Vasilevskiy poke check.
Jake Guentzel tied things back up late in the second period, but Texier scored just over a minute into the third period to give the Canadiens the lead they wouldn’t surrender. Was it a shot that Vasilevskiy, who finished the night with 21 saves, would want back? Probably, but Texier was open and had a clear look because Lane Hutson caught the Lightning on a slow line change.
It was another game where the Lightning did a lot of things fairly well, but struggled to challenge the center of the ice in the offensive zone. Despite 24 scoring chances, only 10 of them were of the high-danger variety, and 5 of those came in the third period when they were pressing for offense. Oddly enough, their best chance, which came just before the Texier goal never even counted as a shot. Darren Raddysh cranked a shot that beat Dobes, but not the iron. The puck came right to Nikita Kucherov, who had a fairly open net to put the puck into it, but the rubber disk hopped over his stick and the chance was erased.
With Nick Paul a late scratch due to illness, the Bolts (outside of Anthony Cirelli who was 9-for-18) struggled in the dot. The other forwards who took draws were a combined 8-for-32 (25%) with James, who otherwise had a solid game, getting blanked in all face-offs he took. Conor Geekie, who took Paul’s spot in the line-up, played a team-low 5:04, landed three hits, and had one shot on goal.
Montreal had some adjustments on their roster as well. Most notably, Gallagher subbing in for Oliver Kapanen. Lightning fans may remember him from the 2014 playoffs where he had three goals and two assists in the Habs sweep of Tampa Bay in that series.
Marty St. Louis also broke up his top line as he moved Josh Anderson up with Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki while playing Juraj Slafkovsky with Ivan Demidov and Jake Evans. Neither of those two lines scored, but Montreal controlled play while they were on the ice. As it has been since they’ve been put together, the line of Texier, Dach, and Zachary Bolduc came through for them as they had two goals.
Of the five games, it was the least penalized one with the Lightning going short-handed just once, albeit for four minutes on a Ryan McDonagh high-stick. Montreal took three penalties, but the Lightning failed to capitalize on their chances with the extra skater.
The Lightning are officially back against the wall. Can they rally as they have all season? Stay tuned to find out.
The Goals
Brendan Gallagher [1] (Alex Newhook) 1-0 Canadiens
Dominic James [1] (Gage Goncalves, Yanni Gourde) 1-1
Kirby Dach [2] (Zachary Bolduc, Kaiden Guhle) 2-1 Canadiens
Jake Guentzel [2] (Unassisted) 2-2
Alexandre Texier [2] (Lane Hutson, Nick Suzuki) 3-2
The Charts
