Canadiens vs. Lightning Stanley Cup Final Game 3: Game thread, rosters, lines, and how to watch

2021 Stanley Cup Final Game 3

Montreal Canadiens vs. Tampa Bay Lightning

TBL leads 2-0

How to watch

Start time: 8:00 PM EDT / 5:00 PM PDT
In Canada: CBC, Sportsnet (English), TVA Sports (French)
In the U.S.: NBC
Streaming: NHL.tv/NHL Live, Sportsnet Now

The Canadiens played more than well enough to win Game 2 ... except for the brief moments when the didn’t. There were too many mistakes in critical situations, and the Lightning capitalized on every one of them to take the game 3-1 and sweep their opening stretch at Amalie Arena.

Now that the Canadiens have arrived in Montreal for the first time, they’ll have Dominique Ducharme back in the fold. His presence hasn’t been behind the bench since a win in Game 2 of the series with the Vegas Golden Knights. He’s not going to be on the ice to cover for errors, but he will be commanding the matchups, and hopefully deploying Cole Caufield when the Canadiens get a massive opportunity for some offence on the power play.

No matter what the adjustments, the team has to have scoring more goals as the top priority. It is extremely difficult to win a game 1-0 given Tampa Bay’s firepower, and we saw just how quick it can strike on Wednesday night. Andrei Vasilevskiy has only allowed two goals through two games, and Montreal needs to find at least that much offence in Game 3 to make this a series.

Montreal Canadiens projected lineup

Scratches

F: Alex Belzile, Laurent Dauphin, Jake Evans, Michael Frolik, Tomas Tatar, Lukas Vejdemo, Jesse Ylönen
D: Cale Fleury, Brett Kulak, Xavier Ouellet, Alexander Romanov
G: Charlie Lindgren, Michael McNiven, Cayden Primeau

Injured/Ill

F: Jonathan Drouin (leave of absence)

Tampa Bay Lightning projected lineup