Game 29: Montreal Canadiens vs. Tampa Bay Lightning
Start time: 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Lightning region: The Spot
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+
It looked like this was going to be the year that the Tampa Bay Lightning’s run as a perennial playoff team would come to an end. They began the season 1-4-2 to sit in last place in the Eastern Conference. Then they rattled off five wins a row.
It’s been a season of wild momentum swings for Tampa Bay. On November 29 they beat the New York Rangers to run a winning streak to seven games, and at that stage they held a four-point lead in the Division. But they haven’t won since, suffering a fourth loss in a row last night in Toronto, and have been shut out in their last two matches.
They remain competitive in this 13th year of Jon Cooper’s head-coaching tenure, but individual players are feeling the effects of a sequence of long seasons. The 36-year-old Ryan McDonagh, who just signed a three-year contract extension, hasn’t played since November 8, Andrei Vasilevskiy, who has a combined 664 starts across the regular and post-season in his career, was just placed on Injured Reserve, and 34-year-old Victor Hedman just returned to the lineup two games ago after missing the previous month of action.
Tale of the Tape
Canadiens
Statistics
Lightning
15-10-3
Record
16-11-2
48.6% (22nd)
Expected-goal share
54.6% (3rd)
3.21 (8th)
Goals per game
3.03 (14th)
3.46 (29th)
Goals against per game
2.59 (5th)
25.6% (4th)
PP%
15.7% (25th)
77.5% (25th)
PK%
87.0% (1st)
2-1-0
Head-to-Head Record (24-25)
1-2-0
Cole Caufield (16)
Most goals
Brandon Hagel (17)
Nick Suzuki (24)
Most assists
Nikita Kucherov (22)
Nick Suzuki (32)
Most points
Nikita Kucherov (34)
Hedman’s lowest goal total under Cooper has been nine, which he posted in both 2020-21 and 2022-23. Though he’s only played 17 games, he has yet to score this season. It’s clear that something has been off for him looking at his shot totals, not at the typical rate of about two-and-a-half per game, but a full shot less, and he has just one on target in the two games of his return. That’s a big weapon the Lightning have typically relied upon that isn’t able to fire at the moment, and the effect is apparent. After those consecutive shutouts, they rank 14th on goals per game at 3.03, a major drop from the 3.56 they had just last season. No team has averaged more goals over the past 13 seasons than the Lightning (3.29), and this is on pace to be their worst offensive year since 2016-17.
Despite the offence being significantly down, the Lightning’s defence remains strong: fifth-best in the NHL. It’s less of an issue that the team can only score three goals when it can hold an opponent to two or fewer, which Tampa Bay has done in half its game. It’s a particularly stingy group on the road, never allowing more than three in another team’s arena and holding a 6-4-2 road record as a result.
That’s bad news for the Canadiens who have lost their home-ice dominance, now holding a 7-7-1 mark after just 12 regulation losses at the Bell Centre all of last season. The Habs might be too confident in their offensive talent this season, leaving the door open to counter-attacks by overextending in the offensive zone, something that kicked off the St. Louis Blues’ comeback on Sunday. The Lightning aren’t going to make those mistakes in this game, and still have the players to capitalize if Montreal is once again too loose in its assignments. But we didn’t see much of that at all in the game versus Toronto the previous night, and hopefully the high stakes of another important divisional game keep the players focused for the full 60 minutes or more.
