The Montreal Canadiens must dig deep and find a way to beat the league’s best team in the Tampa Bay Lightning as the playoffs look more and more doubtful.
Tonight’s game was probably marked down for both Jonathan Drouin and Mikhail Sergachev. The Montreal Canadiens dealt from an area of weakness to address a more concerning weakness, and it’s kept them at a standstill.
To keep this road trip from being a complete failure, the Habs need to get something done in Tampa. The odds are far from being in their favour, and as much as we want to believe that it will take a team effort to win the game, it’s also going to take a lot of luck.
Claude Julien made the right choice in choosing to start Carey Price again for this one. Antti Niemi has played well for the Habs, but the team is going to need elite. However, it’s not going to matter who starts if their coverage in the defensive zone doesn’t improve.
Additionally, they can’t make defence their only objective. Max Pacioretty mentioned after the game last night that the team isn’t attacking as a unit and it’s limiting the amount of time they spend in the offensive zone. You also have to take note of zone entries and an inability to complete passes at times.
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It’s almost as if the players on the team are scared to make a play anymore. Besides Drouin and Alex Galchenyuk, you rarely see anyone on the team try to make anything happen on their own anymore. Jeff Petry had that nice end-to-end rush in the Vancouver game, and that led to a goal, why can’t we see more of that?
The Habs need to establish a level of balance here. Running wild as they did against the Canucks could get them a couple of goals, but they’ll be running a risk of getting scored on every two or three minutes. At the same time, sitting back and playing turtle won’t work as well.
Drouin will have a reason to give a solid performance as it’s the first time he’ll be facing his former team. Hopefully, the rest of the team can rally around him and feed off the same energy.
The Lightning are probably thinking that this will be an easy win. Perhaps Montreal could pull out the reverse trap and catch them by surprise. There will be little to no room for any kind of mistakes. The Habs will have to come out strong and fast to start the game. Otherwise, it will be another loss for them.
Next: Stubbornness is Hurting the Team
What are your predictions for the game? Can the Habs find a way to win? Let us know what you think down below.