TAMPA \u2014 Across the board, the Tampa Bay Lightning talked a lot coming into this series about reversing their recent Game 1 playoff form.<\/p>\n
Nightmares of last year\u2019s 6-2 thumping at the hands of the Florida Panthers still dance in their heads. It set the tone for that five-game series loss. And nobody needs to mention the Lightning lost Game 1 to the Panthers two years ago, too, en route to going down 3-0 in the series in another five-game loss.<\/p>\n
So the idea, no matter how obvious, was that they were not going to chase their first-round series this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about setting the tone and trying to let us set the series up instead of letting someone else dictate it,\u201d winger Brandon Hagel said on the eve of Game 1.<\/p>\n
Well, Hagel did his part Sunday, scoring a pair of goals and making his presence felt all night long.<\/p>\n
But for a third year in a row, the Lightning have opened their playoffs in a 0-1 series hole, with Sunday night\u2019s 4-3 overtime loss to a young but very game Montreal Canadiens side leaving Tampa with a lot to think about.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s obviously not a place you want to be,\u201d Hagel said after the game. \u201cBut I think at the same time, you can look at this game, I think we shot ourselves in the foot. I take an O-zone penalty, and you can go down the list. I don\u2019t think any of those penalties we took prevented a goal. They just put goals in the back of our net. So at the end of the day if you\u2019re going to do that, it\u2019s going to be a long series, or a short series if you want. \u2026 We got to learn from stuff like this. I think that\u2019s an easy fix. They obviously came in here and played a good game. They\u2019re a really good hockey team and we knew that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Head coach Jon Cooper was steaming post-game. And it wasn\u2019t at the refs.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I had a problem with us,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI mean, come on, we took four offensive-zone penalties. Just look at them. That\u2019s not over-aggression. That\u2019s 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\u2019t Game 62. So that is extremely disappointing in the way we conducted ourselves and the amount of penalties we took.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow let\u2019s be honest, (Montreal) went 3-for-6 or whatever it was (3-for-5)? So if you\u2019re going to kill penalties off at 50 percent, then you\u2019re probably not going to last very long. But if you\u2019re killing penalties off at 50 percent when you only gave up two, so it\u2019s 1-for-2, you know, maybe you can survive. But you can\u2019t let that happen. So that\u2019s on us. There\u2019s no excuses. Nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bolts seemed almost shocked they took so many dumb penalties. They\u2019re the veteran, savvy team, after all. They\u2019re the team that has won multiple Stanley Cup titles in recent years. They\u2019re not supposed to do dumb things like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a pretty accountable group here, and to take the penalties that we took tonight (was) pretty much unacceptable,\u201d said veteran leader Ryan McDonagh. \u201cI think a handful of them in the offensive zone, 200 feet away from the net. If it\u2019s a good penalty, that\u2019s one thing, but I don\u2019t think any of them tonight were good. So not great on our part.\u201d<\/p>\n
No better example than Jake Guentzel\u2019s high-sticking penalty on Kaiden Guhle with 21 seconds left in the third period, which eventually led to Juraj Slafkovsky\u2019s overtime winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of those penalties were definitely avoidable,\u201d said Hagel, who singled out his own penalty in the first period. \u201cAt the same, we got to be better on the penalty kill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, they\u2019re one of the best penalty-killing teams in the league, third in the regular season with a 82.6 percent success rate, led by two of the best penalty killers in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the opportunities that we gave and the number of penalties that we took are not the recipe for success in the regular season or playoffs,\u201d said McDonagh. \u201cThey were able to run a lot of plays and feel the puck out there. Certainly the PK has got to step up and do a better job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hagel called himself out in that regard, saying he and his PK pal Anthony Cirelli have got to be better than they were in Game 1 against Montreal\u2019s dangerous power play.<\/p>\n
All these things are true. And the Lightning held themselves accountable post-game Sunday night.<\/p>\n
But one thing also stood out: the Lightning felt so much of Game 1 was self-inflicted that they gave the game away. And I think there\u2019s a real danger for Tampa in overlooking another truth \u2014 that the Canadiens might just be more ready for this despite their youth than a lot of people thought.<\/p>\n
Tampa\u2019s two quick goals 29 seconds apart in the second period to take a 2-1 lead felt like the kind of moment that might bury a young team. The ice was tilted there in back-to-back shifts. The building was rocking. There was that uh-oh feeling hanging in the air from the Canadiens.<\/p>\n
Funny thing happened though. The Habs steadied themselves to score the next two goals. And even Tampa tying it 3-3 at 8:58 of the third period on Hagel\u2019s second of the night didn\u2019t rattle Montreal whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Instead, it was hard to tell which team had all the experience and which team was the youngest team in the Stanley Cup playoffs. It was a quality, veteran player like Guentzel taking the high-sticking penalty late. And it was Montreal capitalizing in overtime on the man advantage.<\/p>\n
And now, the pressure shifts tangibly to the Lightning, who have three straight first-round exits hanging over them entering this postseason. Granted, two of them were to eventual Cup champion Florida. Still, a fourth consecutive first-round exit against a team they were heavily favored to beat would be incredibly hard to swallow.<\/p>\n
Odds are the Bolts still win this series, with too much poise and top-end skill and playoff know-how to be rattled after just one game.<\/p>\n
Still, losing their playoff opener yet again is not what Tampa wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, Game 1s are Game 1s. I\u2019ve been a part of series where we\u2019ve won them and lost the series, and lost them and won the series, and everything in between,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cThat isn\u2019t as much a concern as how we lost it. So if that\u2019s going to be the way we keep going, this series may not go as long as we thought. Now, do I think we have better in us, I think we do. There\u2019s some good things to be taken from tonight. But ultimately, we\u2019re down 1-0 and now we have to win four of the next six.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been taller tasks. Gosh, I\u2019ve been in series where we\u2019ve lost the first two and come back and win. This isn\u2019t do-or-die or anything, but sitting here 15 minutes after a game, you\u2019re a little ticked off.\u201d<\/p>\n
At which point, Cooper got up from his seat at the podium and left after taking only three questions from media.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, this series already got real interesting in a hurry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2014 Across the board, the Tampa Bay Lightning talked a lot coming into this series about reversing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,21,4,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-556623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-montreal-canadiens","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116436597690920359","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556623","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=556623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}