TAMPA, Fla. — This was a night that made you remember that one of these teams is the youngest participating in these Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the other is the Tampa Bay Lightning.
In the end, experience was the difference, with the Lightning erasing a one-goal deficit 12:33 into the third period before taking over and coming through in overtime.
They beat the Canadiens 3-2 to take this series back to Montreal tied 1-1.
“It would’ve been nice to get two (wins),” said coach Martin St. Louis.
His Canadiens were in premium position to deliver after winning the first game 4-3 in overtime and seizing control of Game 2 through the first 40 minutes.
And then the wheels fell off.
“We were just lacking poise,” said St. Louis.
It goes hand in hand with lacking a bit of experience.
How else do you explain 22-year-old Juraj Slafkovsky, who was the hat-trick hero of Game 1, coughing up the puck at his own blue line before Nikita Kucherov finished a play to score his first playoff goal since April 18, 2023?
That came 17 games ago; four series ago; back when he was still in his 20s; back when he was just a year removed from participating in a third straight Stanley Cup Final.
Brandon Hagel, who came to the Lightning that year and then stayed alongside Kucherov for three straight first-round exits from the post-season, said after a game in which he scored the opening goal, fought Slafkovsky, and assisted on Kucherov’s goal for the Gordie Howe hat trick, “It was a clinic in OT.”
The 27-year-old was among the veteran Lightning players to make it so.
They were so composed. Much more so than they had been earlier in the game, when they were seemingly chasing last year’s Florida Panthers instead of playing this year’s Montreal Canadiens.
The Lightning teams that won back-to-back Cups at the start of this decade played fast, hard, skilled hockey before the back-to-back-winning Panthers of the last two years bullied them and left them with an inferiority complex.
“We got s---kicked,” said Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy before this series with Montreal started, and he was referring to last year’s beatdown at the hands of the Panthers, which was strikingly similar to the one given to them in 2024.
They added some sandpaper and tried to rub every team with it on their way back to the playoffs this year. And after losing Game 1 to the Canadiens, they tried — and failed — to intimidate them through the first 40 minutes of Game 2.
Live and learn.
The Lightning saw their young opponents clamp up with the third-period lead and started playing hockey again.
Kucherov’s goal brought a wave of momentum, which the Lightning carried into overtime, where they outshot the Canadiens 8-0 before one of Montreal’s most inexperienced players needlessly iced the puck and then overplayed J.J. Moser on the ensuing faceoff.
It was a brutal sequence for Kirby Dach, who was playing in just his second playoff game since appearing in nine with the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2020 bubble playoffs, and it gave Moser the goal that saved the Lightning from 72 hours of trepidation about their place in this series.
The terrible feeling Dach had at the end of Tuesday’s game will likely linger until Friday’s Game 3 gets underway.
“It’s things like that that you learn from,” said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki. “Next time he’s in that situation, he’s going to remember that play and he’s not going to do that.”
It could be a while before Dach’s in that situation again. Especially with Montreal’s most experienced playoff player, Brendan Gallagher, itching to make his series debut.
If it’s Joe Veleno (zero games of playoff experience) who takes Dach’s place — or someone else’s — you hope he learns from watching the Canadiens fumble away a great opportunity to reunite with their fans up 2-0 against this savvy opponent.
If you’re a Canadiens fan, you have to hope his teammates, who locked down leads with precision and confidence down the stretch of the season, figure out how to do it in the playoffs.
“You have to want the puck, and you have to play with the puck,” said Canadiens veteran Jake Evans. “I thought we actually tried to do that, we just mis-executed and just made bad reads again. If you make bad reads and it’s a harder play, the odds of them getting that puck back and just possessing it and putting more pressure on you, it’s tough. I think that’s what was happening tonight.”
Not so much for him, Phillip Danault and Josh Anderson, who combined on Montreal’s second goal.
But those guys have been around a long time and played a lot of big games in this league.
A lot of their younger teammates still have mileage to gain.
Even 26-year-old Suzuki and 25-year-old Cole Caufield, who led the Canadiens’ offence all season, are among them. They struggled for a second straight game in a hard matchup with Hagel and Cup champions Anthony Cirelli and Jake Guentzel.
It didn’t get any easier when Kucherov took Guentzel’s place four minutes into the third period, leaving Suzuki, Caufield and Slafkovsky at zero five-on-five goals in the series.
“In order for us to win this series,” said Suzuki, “our line’s gotta find a way to produce five-on-five.”
But hey, this series is tied, nonetheless, thanks in large part to the production Suzuki and his linemates have had on the power play.
A lot of experience has been gained by the Canadiens so far in this series, and they'll have to hope it serves them well moving forward.
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