It’s now been roughly three hours since the final horn of the 2025-26 Tampa Bay Lightning season sounded. To this very moment, we’re not exactly sure how the Lightning lost this game. Yes, we grasp the concept that they scored fewer goals than the Canadiens. Still, it was such a well-played game, especially defensively, that we’re still kind of waiting for them to somehow find the equalizer.
The Lightning limited the Montreal Canadiens to nine shots on goal. There was a stretch of roughly 26 minutes, including the entire second period of the game, where Andrei Vasilevskiy’s toughest stop was on a clean face-off win by his own team in the defensive zone. A hockey team isn’t supposed to lose a game when that happens. In fact, it seems like this is the first time a team has won a playoff game with fewer than ten shots, so yay, history.
The facts of the game are that the Canadiens scored first, on a shot that was heading well wide of the net until the hockey gods decided the puck should deflect cleanly off J.J. Moser and into the net. Credit to Nick Suzuki for finally getting on the board at even strength. The Lightning tied it up on the power play. No really, they scored with an extra skater. Not only that, it was the second unit that did it. Dominic James deflected home a shot from Charle-Edouard D’Astous (that was set up by Gage Goncalves) to tie the game.
Then, despite not having much zone time in the third period, the Canadiens took the lead they would not relinquish when Alex Newhook tracked down the puck behind Andrei Vasilevskiy and bounced it off the goaltender as Vasilevskiy tried to punch it out of the air. In hindsight, he probably should have just drifted back to the post and closed off the gap.
Still, with plenty of time left to play, it felt like the Lightning would find the equalizer. At some point, Superman was going to swoop in and save the day. Despite another game where he was neutralized for most of it, Nikita Kucherov was going to have 15 seconds of sublime brilliance and set up a back-door tap-in goal. Brandon Hagel was going to bully his way to the net and jam home another goal. Jake Guentzel was going to redirect a wayward point shot. Brayden Point was going to win a face-off clean to Darren Raddysh and a 97 MPH slapshot would whistle past Jakub Dobes’ earhole into the net.
The superhero never came. Even after Hagel made a desperate save attempt to keep Juraj Slafkovsky from an easy empty-net goal. Even with a last gasp power play with 6.5 seconds on the clock (and the puck on Raddysh’s stick). It just wasn’t to be. In fact, if anything summed up the Lightning’s season post-Olympic break, it was watching a puck destined for an icing, hit a broken stick lying on the ice, forcing the Lightning to play the puck and lug it all the way up the ice.
Montreal might not have been an offensive juggernaut on Sunday night, but they did what they needed to do to win the game. They got the lucky bounce on the first goal after winning a couple of board battles. They were set up in the zone on the second goal because they won the face-off. And while the Lightning had plenty of shots, the defenders in front Dobes did their job of limiting dangerous chances or rebound attempts. In a series as close as this one was, they earned the victory.
One thing this Lightning team never stopped doing was putting in the effort. There was a shift in the third period, in fact it was two shifts before Newhook scored, where Montreal had one of their very few sustained efforts in the Lightning zone. The Lightning players brought the crowd to their feet with their effort. Zemgus Girgensons blocked three shots and Goncalves took one square in the back. Everyone was doing everything they could do to help their goaltender out.
They forechecked hard all game long. Nick Paul was out there throwing his body around and causing a little havoc. Brayden Point was playing with speed. Brandon Hagel was…well Brandon Hagel. They just never quite got the bounce they needed. Unlike in some of the past seasons, this team played with a little bit of hunger. In the end, it wasn’t enough. At some point the puck has to be put in the net, and they just didn’t do it often enough.
The season ends too soon for the fourth time in a row. A season that featured a potential Vezina Trophy winner and a potential Hart Trophy winner went up in smoke. Montreal moves on to face Buffalo and the Lightning move on to face another summer of questions.
