The Tampa Bay Lightning are under no false illusions after losing the opening clash of their Eastern Conference first-round series.<\/p>\n
The Lightning were not good enough and expect much better of themselves when they play host to the Montreal Canadiens for Game 2 of the best-of-seven series Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Montreal claimed the opener 4-3 in overtime thanks to a trio of power-play goals \u2014 all by Juraj Slafkovsky, including the winner \u2014 while the more experienced Lightning were guilty of too many ill-timed and unnecessary infractions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m confident in this room,\u201d Lightning forward Nick Paul said after Monday\u2019s practice. \u201cThat\u2019s one game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both teams staked and then surrendered leads due to special teams. Tampa Bay scored twice with the man advantage.<\/p>\n
In turn, Lightning coach Jon Cooper said a second look showed positives for his team to build upon if they can maintain better discipline.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tight checking. Probably the opposite of what everybody thought this series would be like,\u201d Cooper said of the 5-on-5 play. \u201cThere was a lot of good things to come on that side of the puck. But on the other side of it, we didn\u2019t generate a whole ton.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lightning have another trend to snap. They have lost seven consecutive playoff games that have gone to overtime, a run that began during the 2022 Stanley Cup Final loss to the Colorado Avalanche.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not on our mind,\u201d forward Anthony Cirelli said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to go. Our emotions got to be up. We just have to have that urgency to win a game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooper said defenseman Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous, who left Sunday\u2019s clash after taking a penalized check from Josh Anderson, was doubtful for the game, but he would not divulge whether Max Crozier or Declan Carlile would draw into the lineup if necessary.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens last won a series in 2021, a playoff run that ended with a 4-1 series loss to the Lightning in the Stanley Cup Final.<\/p>\n
As excited as they were to claim the opener of this series, the Canadiens are well aware of the need to park that victory and prepare for the level of play to increase as the hosts push to even the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou obviously don\u2019t want to go down 2-0, so they\u2019re going to be more desperate,\u201d forward Jake Evans said after practice Monday. \u201cThey have a lot of high-end skilled players, (they\u2019re) probably not too happy with how things went, and (they) want to make a big push.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Canadiens were not exactly perfect in their performance, either. Montreal surrendered a pair of one-goal leads, and both times the Lightning used power-play goals to draw even. Plus, it took a strong opening period from goaltender Jakub Dobes to hold off Tampa Bay\u2019s push out of the gates.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens will also be focused on limiting penalties and gaining the upper hand at even-strength play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the first game, and I think there\u2019s a little bit of a feeling-out process,\u201d forward Cole Caufield said. \u201cAs a line, we can\u2019t really take any risks, and they don\u2019t give up much. We\u2019re gonna find ways. We\u2019re gonna find the answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just like the Lightning expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cChanges are going to be made every game,\u201d Caufield said. \u201cThere\u2019s something we can clean up and do better at. I expect the same from them. They\u2019re a well-coached team. We\u2019ve got to be ready for whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Lightning are under no false illusions after losing the opening clash of their Eastern Conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-556963","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\/116439700183415217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556963","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=556963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}