Canadiens vs Lightning recap: The oatmeal raisin cookie of hockey games

You're walking towards the kitchen. The sweet smell of freshly baked goods tickles your nostrils. The anticipation courses through your veins as your eyes identify the source of the fantastic smell; chocolate chip cookies.

The coast is clear. You make your move.

As quickly as humanly possible, you gobble down one of the cookies. As you reach for the next one, it hits you.

Those aren't chocolate chip cookies. Raisins. The horror. Goddamned raisins.

This game was essentially a raisin oatmeal cookie. At first glance it looked like it had a lot of potential, but once the situation became clear, all that was left was a bad taste in your mouth.

First off, the fun stuff. Sergei Gonchar showed no mercy as he laid down his biggest hit of the year.

The Habs actually managed to hold a lead after the first period, for only the sixth time this season, despite not putting a puck on net for over ten minutes. A quick shot from Tomas Plekanec led to a nice Dale Weise tip, which sent the Canadiens to the locker room with a one goal lead. It was Weise's first goal in 18 games.

It wouldn't take very long for Tampa to level the score. A Jonathan Drouin wrist shot produced a rebound chance for J.T. Brown, who was being watched by Alexei Emelin. I say being watched, because that's literally all Emelin did, as Brown was unopposed when he put home the rebound.

Montreal lived up to their billing as a very undisciplined team shortly thereafter, with Subban taking a particularly questionable penalty. And by questionable I mean silly. By silly I mean outright dopey. Upset that his defensive partner Andrei Markov had been interfered with, Subban reached across the bench with his stick, resulting in a well-earned minor penalty.

Tampa Bay didn't waste any time scoring on the powerplay, thanks to some fantastic hand-eye coordination by Tyler Johnson, who corralled a wild cross-ice Nikita Kucherov pass, and tapped it behind Carey Price.

A bad line change that led to a Brett Connolly goal, and a late powerplay marker by Johnson gave Tampa Bay a 4-1 lead, and a sense that the game was already over.

Brendan Gallagher's cheeky pass gave Max Pacioretty a breakaway, and suddenly the lead was cut to two.

The goal was encouraging, but it definitely fit into the cliche of 'too little, too late'.

The good

David Desharnais might end up being the player who will benefit the most from the first line divorce. On the wing he shoots more, and he has extra ice to work with when he's controlling the puck.

The bad

Specialty teams. Montreal's powerplay is broken. 1-for-16 in the last six games, but if we're being realistic it's been pitiful for the last calendar year.

The ugly

If Price isn't borderline perfect, the Habs odds of winning a game are very low.

It was a game to forget, although we should probably keep in mind that this was Montreal's first loss in seven games. Fortunately Michel Therrien and company will have plenty of time to review the game tape, as the next game on the schedule takes place on Saturday night, versus Pittsburgh.

Let's just hope it's not another raisin oatmeal cookie.

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