{"id":553741,"date":"2026-04-16T09:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T09:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/553741\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T09:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T09:04:14","slug":"lightning-are-better-than-canadiens-on-paper-but-hockey-isnt-played-on-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/553741\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning are better than Canadiens on paper \u2013 but hockey isn\u2019t played on paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just a couple days left in the NHL\u2019s regular season, the matchups for the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs are almost completely set. The Eastern Conference<\/a> in particular will be providing some juicy offerings, including the Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> against the Philadelphia Flyers<\/a> and the Buffalo Sabres<\/a> against the Boston Bruins<\/a>. Perhaps most intriguing, though, will be the Atlantic Division showdown between the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> and the Montreal Canadiens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay comes in with all the experience you could ask for, as their core of Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, Victor Hedman (when he returns<\/a>), and goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy boast Stanley Cup championship pedigree. Montreal, on the other hand, are the upstarts, as their young core of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Lane Hutson hope to be kickstarting a prosperous era of Canadiens hockey. This series will either be a reassertion of the old guard, or a metaphorical passing of the torch.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday\u2019s episode of\u00a0Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>, Steve Peters joined hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Colby Cohen to break down the first-round matchup between the Lightning and Canadiens.<\/p>\n

Colby Cohen:\u00a0I think that Montreal-Tampa series has all the keys to being an electric series. These teams, while they can both go offensively, there are some pretty big, stark differences in playoff experience, maybe sandpaper. Everybody\u2019s probably picking Tampa, and rightfully so. What would it take for Montreal to get through Tampa and take that next step in the rebuild of not just being the team that has to learn to win by losing early in the playoffs?<\/p>\n

Steve Peters:\u00a0The concern for me about Montreal right now is their depth. When both teams are fully healthy, which is a huge problem for Tampa right now, Tampa is deeper, they have just as much high-powered skill as we talk about with Montreal and their speed and pace. Tampa has that, but with experience. I think if both teams are healthy, on paper, this is a Tampa team that should be able to get past Montreal. The problem is, they don\u2019t play it on paper, they play it on ice. Without Hedman in the lineup, and who knows if he will return, I think Tampa\u2019s going into this year\u2019s playoffs like they did last year. This is a team that was better than Florida throughout the regular season a year ago, they get into the playoffs injured, played through those injuries and they couldn\u2019t get over the Florida Panthers<\/a>. I think that\u2019s what you\u2019re seeing in Tampa right now. I think injuries have been a big problem.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re third in goals against for the regular season, but since the Olympic break, they\u2019re 23rd in goals against. That\u2019s the bottom third of the league. When you look at Montreal\u2019s goals against since the Olympic break, it\u2019s eighth. They\u2019re opposites in terms of how they\u2019re protecting and defending in front of the net, something that you think Tampa is so much better at than Montreal, but that\u2019s not the case. For Montreal to win this, they\u2019re better off in a track meet. Let\u2019s get the speed going, let\u2019s create turnovers through the neutral zone, let\u2019s get our speedy defensemen getting the puck up to out speedy forwards in our top six, and let\u2019s make this a shootout race. <\/p>\n

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Wednesday\u2019s episode here\u2026<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just a couple days left in the NHL\u2019s regular season, the matchups for the first round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-553741","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\/116413589063481454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553741","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=553741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}