{"id":533604,"date":"2026-03-31T22:24:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T22:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/533604\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T22:24:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T22:24:30","slug":"carrier-injured-dobes-starts-versus-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/533604\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrier Injured, Dobes Starts Versus Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Montreal Canadiens<\/a> (42-21-10) will face the Tampa Bay Lightning (46-21-6) on Tuesday night, with the puck drop scheduled for 7 pm ET.<\/p>\n

It will be third time these two teams meet, with the Lightning winning both previous matchups. Montreal lost 6-1 in early December, and while the Habs offered a much better effort the next meeting, they still ended up dropping a 5-4 decision in late December.<\/p>\n

Simply put, Tampa Bay is the type of team that gives Montreal fits. As it stands, if the playoffs started today<\/a>, the Canadiens would be facing the Buffalo Sabres, but there are also decent odds they end up facing the Lightning in the first round of the playoffs depending on how the final stretch of the season unfolds.<\/p>\n

Lineup Changes<\/p>\n

Jakub Dobes is set to start<\/a> versus Tampa Bay, and will aim to win his fourth game in a row, a continuation of the excellent results that led to him being named the First Star of the Week<\/a> in the NHL. <\/p>\n

As for the rest of the lineup, the Habs announced defenceman Alex Carrier<\/a> would miss between two and four weeks with an upper-body injury which explains why they recalled Adam Engstrom from the Laval Rocket (AHL).<\/p>\n

Engstrom, 24, can play on either the left or the right, and is clearly Laval\u2019s most productive defenceman. He\u2019s also the most NHL-ready player on the farm, and while calling up David Reinbacher would have been interesting, it\u2019s unwise to toss someone to the wolves at this point of the NHL season. Reinbacher\u2019s time will come, eventually.<\/p>\n

That being said, Engstrom is not expected to play on Tuesday. Rather, Arber Xhekaj practiced alongside Kaiden Guhle, giving us a fairly good indication of the likely defensive pairing, and putting an end to his one-game experiment as a fourth-line forward. <\/p>\n

Montreal Canadiens Projected Lineup<\/p>\n

Cole Caufield<\/a> \u2013 Nick Suzuki<\/a> \u2013 Juraj Slafkovsky<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Newhook \u2013 Oliver Kapanen \u2013 Ivan Demidov<\/a><\/p>\n

Zach Bolduc \u2013 Jake Evans \u2013 Josh Anderson<\/p>\n

Joe Veleno \u2013 Phillip Danault \u2013 Brendan Gallagher<\/p>\n

Mike Matheson \u2013 Noah Dobson<\/p>\n

Kaiden Guhle \u2013 Arber Xhekaj*<\/p>\n

Jayden Struble- Lane Hutson<\/p>\n

Jakub Dobes<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay Lightning Projected Lineup<\/p>\n

Brandon Hagel \u2013 Anthony Cirelli \u2013 Nikita Kucherov<\/p>\n

Gage Gonclaves \u2013 Brayden Point \u2013 Jake Guentzel<\/p>\n

Zemgus Girgensons \u2013 Yanni Gourde \u2013 Pontus Holmberg<\/p>\n

Corey Perry \u2013 Nick Paul \u2013 Oliver Bjorkstrand<\/p>\n

Darren Raddysh \u2013 J.J. Moser<\/p>\n

Ryan McDonagh \u2013 Erik Cernak<\/p>\n

Emil Lilleberg \u2013 Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous<\/p>\n

Andrei Vasilevskiy<\/p>\n

How To Watch The Habs Vs. The Bolts<\/p>\n

The Montreal Canadiens versus the Tampa Bay Lightning, Tuesday, March 31, 2026, will be aired<\/a> on RDS and TSN2. An instant recap complete with highlights will be available on Sportsnaut<\/a> as soon as the final whistle is blown.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"avatar\"<\/p>\n

\t\tMarc has been covering the Habs for over a decade. He previously worked for Journal Metro, The Athletic, The … More about Marc Dumont<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Canadiens (42-21-10) will face the Tampa Bay Lightning (46-21-6) on Tuesday night, with the puck drop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5105],"tags":[5,189,21,4,540,92,5168,5167],"class_list":{"0":"post-533604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-lightning","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-lightning","10":"tag-montreal-canadiens","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-tampa-bay","13":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","14":"tag-tampabay","15":"tag-tampabaylightning"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116326136998763934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}