Game 36: Montreal Canadiens @ Tampa Bay Lightning
Start time: 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Lightning region: Bally Sports Sun
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN
The Montreal Canadiens didn’t play badly versus the Florida Panthers last night. Even despite getting outshot 12-3 in the second period, they did well to keep the Panthers to the outside of the offensive zone, actually allowing fewer scoring chances than they had in the first period while allowing only four actual shots. Even in the third period, the Canadiens had taken over control of the game before the Panthers’ third goal was scored to make it a 3-1 contest. The Habs were very much creating their opportunities to tie the game and earn a rare point in Florida.
In the end, it was the penalty kill that let them down yet again, as the Panthers exploited the diamond formation to create plays around the net that the coverage isn’t designed to prevent. The Canadiens were fortunate enough to have one goal against their power play taken away by an offside review, but the two they allowed were more offence than they were able to muster on the night. With those goals against, the penalty kill has slipped under 72%, not far from ranking as the worst in the league.
As the Canadiens have now seen their record fall from 2-0-1 on this road stretch to an even 2-2-1, they take their bad-and-getting-worse penalty kill into Amalie Arena to face a Tampa Bay Lightning team converting nearly 30% of its power-play opportunities into goals.
| Canadiens | Statistics | Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| 15-15-5 | Record | 17-15-5 |
| 46.0% (28th) | Scoring-chances-for % | 52.0% (11th) |
| 2.74 (27th) | Goals per game | 3.31 (14th) |
| 3.37 (23rd) | Goals against per game | 3.42 (25th) |
| 18.4% (21st) | PP% | 29.6% (3rd) |
| 71.9% (31st) | PK% | 79.6% (16th) |
| 0-1-0 | Head-to-Head Record | 1-0-0 |
The Lightning lead the NHL with 35 goals on the man advantage, nearly one goal in each of the 37 games they’ve played so far. It’s over one-quarter of their total offence that ranks as a middling 14th overall, which isn’t something you’d often see from this club in Steven Stamkos’s time in Tampa.
Defensively the team has had major struggles this season. The thinking was that things would turn around when Andrei Vasilevskiy returned to play partway through the season, but that hasn’t been the case. The 2019 Vezina Trophy-winner holds a mediocre .900 save percentage from 15 appearances, and has just 0.66 goals saved above average in that time.
Nearly halfway through the season, the Lightning don’t sit in a playoff spot, and you can’t say they deserve to hold one with the way they’ve played. Even with an elite power play, they allow more goals than they score, At this stage, it’s a team reliant on the starpower of Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, and Brayden Point to get wins, and those victories have become hard to accumulate.
For the Canadiens, however, starpower is one of the things they tend to struggle with. They don’t have any true shutdown players with Kirby Dach out, so the best scorers tend to find success versus what is still a rebuilding group. Whether it’s a goal and two assists for Kirill Kaprizov, a hat trick for Andrei Svechnikov and four points for Sebastian Aho, or allowing five scoring chances to Aleksander Barkov and Sam Bennett, an inability to keep the stars on opposing teams from creating offence has been a factor in their recent losses.
The solution is to have Montreal’s star players outperform their counterparts, and the top line should find a lot more room in this game than they did versus the stingy Hurricanes and Panthers. Stifling defence isn’t a thing Tampa Bay can do with its current roster, so there should be no shortage of quality looks for the Habs fans who’ve made the trip to the area for the holidays to get excited about this evening. A regulation win moves the Canadiens two points back of the Lightning in the standings, and ensures at least a .500 record from these seven road games.
