TAMPA — From his very first shift of Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday, Montreal Canadiens forward Juraj Slafkovský looked like a player intent on having an impact on this series.
He was physical and purposeful, exactly the kind of player the Canadiens hoped they were getting when they took Slafkovský with the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NHL Draft.
“First shift I was just trying to go out there and hit some guys to get myself into the game, to get going,” Slafkovský said. “I feel like it’s a good way to start. All the lines, they went out there and started really physical. It’s a good way to set the tone for the start of the game and I think it helped our team today.”
Slafkovský’s three power-play goals helped the Canadiens secure a 4-3 win in Game 1 and wrest home-ice advantage in the series away from the Lightning.
Slafkovský scored the game-winner for the Canadiens 1:22 into overtime. And more than his first playoff hat trick, Slafkovský was more concerned about even needing to get a third goal to get a win.
“It was pretty nice. I like that feeling,” he said. “But we don’t want to go to overtime, hopefully we can close out games before that. I’m happy the way it happened, but we’ve still got to focus before next game.”
The Canadiens only mustered 19 shots on goal in the game, but Slafkovský had seven of them. He was a runaway train all night.
The Lightning had their own runaway train in Brandon Hagel, who missed the last regular-season meeting against the Canadiens but scored twice and was a menace all night. They also got a goal from Darren Raddysh off a bomb on the power play in the first period.
We’re in for a treat if Game 1 was any indication of how the Canadiens and Lightning plan to go about things.
Tampa’s self-inflicted wounds
The Lighting gave up three power-play goals, including the OT winner, and post-game were irate at themselves. Head coach Jon Cooper was asked if he was upset with all the penalty calls.
“No, I had a problem with us,” Cooper said. “I mean, come on, we took four offensive zone penalties. Just look at them. That’s not over-aggression. That’s just stupidity, you know, a lot of them. That was on us. That was a game that we just gave them an opportunity to win. This is the Stanley Cup playoffs. This isn’t Game 62. So that is extremely disappointing in the way we conducted ourselves and the amount of penalties we took. Now let’s be honest, they (Montreal) went 3-for-6 or whatever it was? So if you’re going to kill penalties off at 50 percent, then you’re probably not going to last very long.”
That was echoed by Brandon Hagel, who played a heck of a game but as one of the team’s key penalty killers, was not happy at all on that end of things.
“We knew they had a good power play, we got to execute on the penalty kill, it’s pretty simple,’’ Hagel said. “It starts with myself and it starts with (Anthony) Cirelli. It’s our job to kill penalties off. And we didn’t do that.’’
The matchup game
Yanni Gourde has got some deserved mention for Selke Trophy votes this season for his excellent defensive work, the Lightning deploying his line against the other team’s top offensive threats. He’s played a lot of hard matchup minutes. But isn’t it interesting, and not really that surprising, that Cooper chose to match up Cirelli against Nick Suzuki’s top line for Montreal on Sunday.
“Two really good lines going up against each other,” Suzuki said. “It kind of felt like it was a lot of just up and down the ice and neutral zone, not a lot of O-zone time for either line. So it was important that we contribute, and the power play did its job tonight.”
When push comes to shove, coaches reveal their true feelings about their players in crunch time during the playoffs.
That’s not a dig on Gourde at all, but Cirelli remains one of the NHL’s premier two-way players and the Lightning clearly feel his higher skill level matches better against Suzuki. In any case, Cooper had Gourde’s checking unit often matched up against Phillip Danault’s checking unit, which is a bit strange on the surface, but it allowed Brayden Point’s top line to free itself of Danault’s line more often with Tampa having last line change. The result was Point’s top line with superstar Nikita Kucherov and Gage Goncalves getting mostly Montreal’s second line centered by Alex Newhook. That is pretty ideal for Tampa, and one wouldn’t think so much for Montreal.
The question was how Montreal would react, but head coach Martin St. Louis didn’t really try to avoid those matchups. And given that Montreal doesn’t have last line change here in Tampa for the opening two games, St. Louis is limited in what he can do. But there’s probably some merit in trying to get Danault out there once in a while, if possible, against Point. St. Louis unsurprisingly did not want to get into his reasons for why he allowed the matchup game to go as it did.
“I’m really not going to answer that question,” St. Louis said. “It’s always a cat and mouse game.”
But he did seem at least satisfied with how the Newhook line did against Point and Kucherov.
“You know they’re coming, Kuch is coming and Point’s coming, and now how can I get the right matchup?” St. Louis said. “I thought he handled it pretty good.”
The rookie against the master
One of the biggest mismatches in this series appeared to be in goal, with Canadiens rookie Jakub Dobeš facing the Lightning’s Andrei Vasilevskiy.
On Saturday after practice, Vasilevskiy was asked about facing Dobeš, and twice referenced how short Dobeš’ run of success has really been, especially when compared to his track record of success that spans years as opposed to weeks.
“He’s been hot for what? The last 10, 15 games for sure,” Vasilevskiy said. “The whole (Canadiens) team was pretty hot after the Olympic break. Obviously, I’m playing against the team and, to be honest, I don’t really think about the guy on the other side. I’m trying to focus on myself.”
Dobeš more than held his own and gave the Canadiens a chance to win, making a series of big saves in the first period especially to allow his team to survive a bit of a slow start where they put nine shots on Vasilevskiy through the first two periods of play.
“I feel like going down on the road early would be pretty tough,” Dobeš said. “So I was just trying to have a good start for the team. I’m glad they didn’t score right away.”
Playoff Anderson showed up as advertised
There was a definite ramp up in Josh Anderson’s game down the stretch of the regular season, and in particular in the Canadiens’ final matchup with the Lightning on April 9 in Montreal, where he was in the middle of everything. The Canadiens’ physical response to the expected nastiness of the Lightning was seemingly sitting largely on Anderson’s shoulders, though St. Louis disputed the notion that might feel like a burden for Anderson on Sunday morning.
“I don’t think Andy takes this as a heavy responsibility,” he said. “I feel like Andy, that’s just the way he’s wired. He likes those moments, he gets pulled into it. He’s done it I feel his whole career, he elevates in the playoffs in those moments. And I expect nothing less.”
His expectations were met.
Anderson was intense and physical all night, on top of being very disruptive on the Canadiens’ penalty kill. He opened the scoring for Montreal when defenseman Alexandre Carrier, playing his first game back from injury since March 29, chipped a puck off the wall below the Lightning goal line out to Anderson for the finish at 13:24 of the first period.
“I thought he was ready to go right from the start,” Suzuki said of Anderson. “I think his style of play and his energy and speed and physicality is perfect for playoff hockey. He started us off with a big goal, big hits and doing great stuff on the penalty kill. He had a big night for us and we’ll need him for the rest of the playoffs to be playing like that.”
His physicality cost the Canadiens when Anderson hammered Charle-Edouard D’Astous and was called for charging at 10:55 of the second. The Lightning scored on the ensuing penalty to tie the game, and went up a goal 29 seconds later when Brandon Hagel scored from right in front of Dobeš.
The thin line between aggression and discipline
From preseason brawling with rival Florida to some raucous games with Montreal and Buffalo in the last month of the regular season, the Lightning have been an ornery bunch this season. Which, as Brandon Hagel explained to us Saturday, was absolutely by design because as a group the Lightning felt they got pushed around by Florida last year in the playoffs and were committed to not letting that happen again.
“I’m not saying we’re the toughest team in the league, but I always say that we have 25 guys that’ll leave this rink with a black eye,” Hagel said. “When you have 25 of those guys in your dressing room you’re probably in a good spot. It’s about setting the tone and trying to let us set the series up instead of letting someone else dictate it.”
Hagel had a monster shift in the second period where he hit everything in sight in the Montreal zone and ended up scoring what at the time gave the Lightning a 2-1 lead. It was vintage Hagel. He added a power-play goal in the third period to tie the game 3-3.
Hedman update
Lightning captain Victor Hedman skated with the scratches during the team’s optional Sunday morning skate in his last step in ramping it up in an effort to eventually return to play. Cooper, however, was hesitant pre-game to pinpoint what Hedman skating Sunday meant in the process.
“It just means he’s just progressing,” Cooper said. “You know, it’s going to be tough … as coaches, you’re not trying to hide anything or anything like that, in the end 20 guys are going to go out and play, same with Montreal. But when you get to this point and guys get banged up, and then there’s always that, ‘How close is he? How close is he?’ Sometimes you just don’t have answers. …
“This time of year, yeah we love seeing guys skate and stuff like that, but that still could mean they’re three weeks away. Or you can be like (Ottawa’s) Thomas Chabot and break your wrist and be right back. You just never know.”
Cooper finished that thought by saying he won’t really be able to comment much on injuries, Hedman or otherwise, given the time of year.