MONTREAL—We shouldn’t be surprised, but we should definitely be impressed.
The Tampa Bay Lightning—who have been facing elimination from the playoff race, seemingly for the better part of two months—kept their hopes alive with a 4-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens that never seemed to be much in doubt from the minute the puck dropped on Friday.
Sure, there were a few scares, but from the second Yanni Gourde deposited his fifth goal in his 20th career game at the 11:42 mark of the first period, the Lightning never trailed.
And it was right as Gourde popped in his second of the night—this one coming on the power play to give Tampa some much needed insurance with 15 minutes remaining in the third period—that this fabled run down the stretch for the Lightning was put into context.
It’s the players like Gourde who have been instrumental in keeping this Lightning drive alive; a player like 26-year-old defenceman Luke Witkowski, who airmailed a pass to Nikita Kucherov to start the 2-on-1 rush that led to Gourde’s first goal; a player like Cory Conacher, who was re-acquired by the Lightning last off-season and managed to come through with two huge assists on Friday—when it mattered most.
They are players we wouldn’t be talking about had it not been for the injuries that have turned what was supposed to be a dream season into a bit of a nightmare.
"That’s why we’re winning," said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. "Can’t say enough about the [Gabriel] Dumont-[Mikael] Bournival-[Greg] McKegg line and how they’ve been winning faceoffs and getting us out of our own end. It’s a full-team effort, that’s what’s carrying us."
That, and the contributions of a few superstars that had most people prognosticating before the season began that this Lightning team had as good of a chance as ever to capture its first Stanley Cup since 2004.
A Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 2015 and a return visit that stopped short in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals in 2016, had put them in position.
But as they entered Game 80 of their season without a single player having played in all of them, their three-point deficit in the race for the Eastern Conference’s final playoff spot made sense.
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Friday’s game was one, like the last 20 or so before it, begging for the kind of heroism Steven Stamkos is paid to provide. But the Lightning captain has missed all but 17 this season with a knee injury.
Big-game player Ryan Callahan was reduced to just 18 games.
So it was the superstar, Kucherov, who stepped up by taking the shot off the crossbar that led to Gourde’s first goal before scoring a beauty of his own with only 10 seconds remaining in the first period to give him 40 on the year. It was Ondrej Palat, who recorded his 35th assist of the season by launching the Hail Mary to Kucherov.
Palat providing a couple of heroic shot blocks with the Lightning clinging to a two-goal lead and being forced to kill off a 6-on-4 advantage the Canadiens had with just over two minutes remaining, earning him player of the game honours from his teammates.
And this run would’ve come to an end had it not been for a few saves goaltender Andrei Vasilievskiy made. None better than his scrambling blocker stop in the third period on Alexander Radulov.
"He’s an up-and-coming star in this league," said Cooper.
"That [save] was unbelievable," added Lightning defenceman Victor Hedman, who played 28:05 after playing nearly half of Thursday’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. "If you googled the word competitor, I think his face shows up first."
The Lightning are filled with those types of players, and they pulled through against a Canadiens team that put 28 shots on net and put up more of a challenge than expected.
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The game meant nothing in the standings to the Canadiens, who had punched their ticket to the post-season over a week ago and clinched home-ice advantage through the first two rounds of the playoffs by nailing down top spot in the Atlantic Division with a 4-1 win over the Florida Panthers on Monday.
They will travel to Detroit for a game on Saturday—their last at Joe Louis Arena—without goaltender Carey Price, defenceman Andrei Markov, leading scorer Max Pacioretty and Radulov.
Injured defencemen Shea Weber and Alexei Emelin aren’t making the trip, either.
Meanwhile, the Lightning will head home to host Buffalo in their last game of the season on Sunday. Their resilience has brought the team to within one point of the Leafs, who are set for back-to-back games against the Pittsburgh Penguins and Columbus Blue Jackets this weekend.
We shouldn’t be surprised they’ve shown the composure to stay alive, but we should certainly be impressed.
Unfortunately for the Lightning, all the Leafs have to do is win to eliminate them.
Cooper says he won’t watch.
"The one thing about this is it’s out of our control, so if I was a team watching our game [Friday], I probably would’ve been aggravated for two and a half hours," said Cooper. "So, save myself any potential aggravation and just get a text at about 10:00 [p.m. Saturday]."
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