The Tampa Bay Lightning walked into the Bell Centre on Friday with a chance to take control of the series, but left with a 3-2 overtime loss and now trail in the best-of-seven matchup. The atmosphere in Montreal was exactly what they expected—loud, hostile, and relentless—but that didn’t seem to be a factor.
Montreal struck first when Alexandre Texier opened the scoring just 4:53 into the first period, but Brayden Point answered quickly with a power-play goal at 7:42 to even things at 1-1. Brandon Hagel gave Tampa Bay its first lead of the night early in the second period, scoring unassisted at 4:47 to make it 2-1.
Kirby Dach tied it at 2-2 at 12:43, firing a wrist shot that deflected off Ryan McDonagh’s leg and slipped through Andrei Vasilevskiy’s pads.
“We weren’t as sharp as we need to be, for sure,” McDonagh said. “We talked about giving up breakaways and odd-mans, you know, we haven’t done a lot of that in this series. But tonight it certainly got away from us defensively. And hats off to Vasy, he gave us a chance there in overtime. But ultimately I think the right team won tonight and that’s on us.”
© Eric Bolte-Imagn ImagesMontreal defenseman Lane Hutson scored the game-winner, shooting through four Lightning jerseys and over Andrei Vasilevskiy’s blocker to give the Canadiens a 3-2 victory. Vasilevskiy gave the Lightning every chance to win, turning aside three breakaways and keeping them in a game where the margin for error was always going to be razor thin.
“I thought out of the three games this was our worst game, you know, for us, from start to finish,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “It was fortunate for us that we took this to overtime. We gave up three pretty much full-ice breakaways, the goalie kept us in it, so that was a little disappointing in that sense.”
For Tampa Bay, there are now 48 hours to reset and get back on track. With each of the last two games going beyond regulation, the difference has come down to a number of small of details.
"They shot, and I think that's the difference between what's happened with Montreal and us. I thought we passed up way too many opportunities that we had to be able to generate some things,” said Cooper. "Give Dach and that line credit. They had opportunities and they shot them, and they went in the net. You can tic-tac your way down the ice all you want, but at some point you've got to shoot it in the net and that definitely was not on our agenda for some of our night.”
Game 4 is set for Sunday.