{"id":554564,"date":"2026-04-17T13:48:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554564\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T13:48:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:48:20","slug":"tampa-bay-lightning-first-round-schedule-against-the-montreal-canadiens-has-been-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554564\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Lightning First Round Schedule against the Montreal Canadiens has been released"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the final regular season games concluding late Thursday night (and having a bearing on the final Western Conference seedings) the NHL\u2019s first round schedule took a little while to complete. In the wee early hours of Friday morning, it finally dropped. Along with the other fourteen teams left competing, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens finally learned exactly when they\u2019ll be competing against each other over the next two weeks.<\/p>\n

For those of you in the Tampa area who feel like blowing off work early today, the team will have a pep rally<\/a> at Sparkman Wharf from 6-8 PM. Plenty of \u201cactivations\u201d along with a live episode of The Block Party Podcast (expect a special guest or two for that) and plenty of giveaways. <\/p>\n

Game 1: Montreal at Tampa Bay, 5:45 p.m. ET April 19 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max, SN, CBC, TVAS)<\/p>\n

The rumors<\/a> from yesterday were true and the Lightning kick things off with an early evening contest on Sunday. <\/p>\n

Game 2: Montreal at Tampa Bay, 7 p.m. ET April 21 (ESPN2, SN, CBC, TVAS)<\/p>\n

Game Two is right on track with a Tuesday night start time. The two teams get the standard one day off to make adjustments as everyone not involved with either organization wildly overreacts to what happened in the first game. <\/p>\n

Game 3: Tampa Bay at Montreal, 7 p.m. ET April 24 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max, SN, CBC, TVAS)<\/p>\n

Due to the long train trip between Florida and Quebec there is an extra day off for the two teams as the series doesn\u2019t resume until Friday. Wait, this isn\u2019t the 1940s. It\u2019s more likely that the league doesn\u2019t want one of its marquee match-ups to go head-to-head against the first round of the NFL draft (that honor goes to Carolina and Ottawa).<\/p>\n

Game 4: Tampa Bay at Montreal, 7 p.m. ET April 26 (ESPN, SNE, SNO, SNP, CBC, TVAS)<\/p>\n

Well, that means Game Four is another Sunday Funday contest. For us, the fourth game of the series is always pivotal. The difference between being down 3-1 or tied 2-2 is huge. Or you know, it could be a sweep (highly doubtful for this series).<\/p>\n

*Game 5: Montreal at Tampa Bay, April 29 TBD<\/p>\n

Should the series need a few more games (and we think it will) it\u2019s another two-day travel break before the series gets underway again in Tampa on a Wednesday.<\/p>\n

*Game 6: Tampa Bay at Montreal, May 1 TBD<\/p>\n

No extra day for travel this time. With the prospect of elimination a possibility, the teams have a Friday night battle at the Bell Centre. We assume it will be Friday night. Not that anything is impossible for the NHL, but a Friday 1:00 PM start time would be super weird.<\/p>\n

*Game 7: Montreal at Tampa Bay, May 3 TBD<\/p>\n

A third Sunday Funday? In this economy? Crazy! Game Seven. All the stress to kick off a work week should be fun. Can you call in sick to work two weeks ahead of time? <\/p>\n

We\u2019ll be here providing coverage and over reactions the entire time so stay tuned for more! The latest episode of Backchecking the Bolts is out there as well. Justin and Jason are joined by Jared Book from Eyes on the Prize to talk about the series and lay out some predictions.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the final regular season games concluding late Thursday night (and having a bearing on the final Western…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-554564","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\/116420365741413620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554564","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=554564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}