{"id":534134,"date":"2026-04-01T05:19:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/534134\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T05:19:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:19:17","slug":"canadiens-win-over-lightning-shows-how-far-theyve-come-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/534134\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ win over Lightning shows how far they’ve come this season"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA BAY, Fla. \u2014 All the ingredients have come together for the Montreal Canadiens<\/a> at the right time. <\/p>\n

With the playoffs finally in view and an appearance in them all but secured, the Atlantic Division is up for grabs with only eight games remaining.<\/p>\n

For much of this season, the Canadiens needed a reliable goaltender, and two have now emerged. Up until recently, it felt like they bled two great scoring chances for every one they created, but they\u2019ve buckled down defensively to change that. Their penalty kill, which mis-clicked for months, has suddenly fallen into place. And while locking down leads seemed impossible for a good stretch, they\u2019ve combined all those improvements to buck that trend convincingly.<\/p>\n

The result? A season-high six consecutive wins, all earned in regulation.<\/p>\n

This last one\u2014a 4-1 win secured by two empty-net goals against arguably the hardest team in the Eastern Conference to keep at bay\u2014was \u201cprobably the biggest win of the season,\u201d according to captain Nick Suzuki.<\/p>\n

He labelled it so due to the Canadiens proximity to the Lightning in the standings\u2014they\u2019re now only two points behind\u2014and to the Buffalo Sabres, who are four points up having played one more game.<\/p>\n

Of course, the 10-point gap opened on bubble teams Ottawa, Detroit and Philadelphia by beating this formidable Lightning team and keeping the NHL\u2019s hottest scorer, Nikita Kucherov, off the board in the process also spoke to how big of a win this was for the Canadiens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen 86 is on the ice, it\u2019s never easy,\u201d said Jakub Dobes, who made 18 saves before pushing aside a Brandon Hagel breakaway to preserve the Canadiens\u2019 2-1 lead with one second left in the middle frame.<\/p>\n

Dobes then made another 17 in the third because the Lightning were relentless.<\/p>\n

From Dobes to Suzuki, and from Kaiden Guhle to Joe Veleno, who started the season as the 13th\u00a0forward, got relegated to 15th\u00a0at one point, and now might be impossible to remove from the lineup once Kirby Dach and Alex Texier return to health.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s been a great player for us this year in terms of giving us some depth, especially defensively,\u201d said Martin St. Louis of Veleno. \u201cHe\u2019s a guy I trust on the ice\u2026 Whenever he comes in, he understands the way we want to play, he respects the rules that we play in defensively and stuff, and he\u2019s a good skater. He can get on the forecheck, he can bring some physicality because of his skating. He\u2019s been really good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Veleno, and everyone else.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what you need to win games at this time of year, and it\u2019s definitely what you need to beat the Lightning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a team that has had a lot of success,\u201d said St. Louis, who was once a superstar player in Tampa. \u201cI feel like when I took the job (in February of 2022), I looked at that team, their path, and how they did it. It\u2019s something that we were trying to get to, and I feel over the last few years we\u2019ve gotten closer… And when you do that, there\u2019s a bigger responsibility now: it\u2019s to not get satisfied with it just because you win, but sticking to that process that we\u2019re trying to bring each and every day. You need that process against teams like that because you can do everything right against a team like that and still lose the game. So I\u2019m just proud of the intention we had today.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could see it in the physical implication, which was epitomized by Guhle, who may have lost partner Alex Carrier to an upper-body injury before the game but didn\u2019t lose the swagger he\u2019s been playing with through this winning streak.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old defenceman talked about his early-season struggles, linking them to chasing offence rather than leaning into his defensive identity, and referenced a mentality switch that\u2019s brought out exactly what the Canadiens have needed from him through this crucial stretch.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust being an in-your-face prick type of player,\u201d Guhle said. “My game is being hard to play against and being in your face and not giving the other team\u2019s players time and space. Offence will come, and I\u2019ve found since I started doing that, I\u2019m playing a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever mental reset Dobes went through has brought him up several levels from where he was through early December.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Czech netminder has been a wall, finding better balance in his crease\u2014and with his emotions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still a rookie, so every time I learn something it\u2019s part of the process,\u201d Dobes said after being tagged back into post-game media availability following an eight-day timeout from those responsibilities. \u201cI know I\u2019m going to make mistakes and I\u2019m going to learn every week, almost every day, so I\u2019m just used to it. Just trying to work on my craft, that\u2019s really it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Dobes was winning earlier in the season, it was while allowing four, five goals per outing.<\/p>\n

He was named the NHL\u2019s first star of the week Monday after stopping 100 of 104 shots in wins over Carolina (x2) and Columbus, and he was impenetrable Tuesday against the Lightning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like he looks in the zone right now,\u201d said St. Louis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a very confident guy right now who\u2019s playing with some swagger. He looks big in the net,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

You could say the same of Jacob Fowler, who\u2019s won three of four starts since being recalled from the Laval Rocket in the second week of March.<\/p>\n

In front of both goaltenders, the Canadiens stars have shone bright.<\/p>\n

On this night, Juraj Slafkovsky made dominant plays to continue his remarkable season. The six-foot-three winger, who turned 22 Monday, notched his 15th\u00a0power-play goal and 29th\u00a0tuck of the season 12:25 into the first, and then he charged down the ice in the 13th\u00a0minute of the second to give Cole Caufield one of the easiest of the 47 goals he\u2019s scored through 74 games.<\/p>\n

The individual performances from both players and Suzuki, whose empty netter counted as his 27th\u00a0goal and 92nd\u00a0point of the campaign, have driven the Canadiens to another level.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s really about the collective and what it\u2019s accomplishing when it matters most; the way it\u2019s facing its problems head-on and finding ways to correct them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel the guys are having the right intentions in trying to reach our objectives in terms of what you have to do on the ice,\u201d said St. Louis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s preparing the Canadiens for what comes next, with two games remaining on this road trip and six others to play before the real fun begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA BAY, Fla. \u2014 All the ingredients have come together for the Montreal Canadiens at the right time.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-534134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116327769196376707","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534134","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=534134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}