What the Montreal Canadiens can learn from the Tampa Bay Lightning
The Tampa Bay Lightning lasted four games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs losing to the Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Montreal Canadiens can take a great lesson from it.
Expectations can be a very dangerous thing. On the other hand, a lack of expectations can turn not even the greatest performance into a redeeming story. But when you have expectations like the Tampa Bay Lightning did, the only way to take the narrative is in the pits of pessimism and frustration, an area the Montreal Canadiens are all too familiar with.
During the 2013-14 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Montreal Canadiens made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals. They got through Tampa in five (irony) and the Boston Bruins in seven to lose to the New York Rangers in six. Things would’ve been different if Carey Price was still around as he had a .919 save percentage heading into Game One of the ECF, but we all know what happened there.
Though that’s still not the peak of the Habs expectations, the season after for the 2014-15 campaign however was. That was the year Price snapped and stopped what seemed to be every puck that came his way.
He had a .933 save percentage, 1.96 goals against average (which yes is a looked over stat nowadays but considering the Montreal Canadiens weren’t necessarily a defensive juggernaut back then, you can take this as being pretty impressive), and carried the team to a 103-point season.
The Montreal Canadiens were second in the league only three points behind the President Trophy winning Rangers clinching the Atlantic Division. However, the farthest they got to was the second round losing to the Lightning (karma).
After a season of being down in the dumps standings-wise, the Habs came back with a new defenceman in Shea Weber to take the Atlantic Division once again with another 100-plus point year. It wasn’t as dominating as their 2014-15 run with other teams hitting the mark as well, but with Carey Price, the team was looking confident in their first-round series against the New York Rangers. And they lost.
But what does this have to do with the Lightning? Well if you haven’t noticed, Tampa came off from having the best regular season record in the current era of the NHL. They had a player in Nikita Kucherov who ran away with the Art Ross Trophy putting up 41 goals and 87 assists while the team itself lead the league in goals for (352) and goal differential (+103).
They dominated at the special teams game with the NHL’s top powerplay (28.2%) and penalty kill (85.0%) while Andrei Vasilevskiy improved on his performance from the season before going from a .920 save percentage to a .925. And they lost.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are out. The team who many pegged to win the Stanley Cup for the first time since 2004. The team who many thought would steamroll the Eastern Conference and easily deal with whoever had the “honour” of having to take them on in the final. The team who gave the Montreal Canadiens the most cathartic victory of the year given how monstrous they were as a unit. They’re gone, eliminated by the Columbus Blue Jackets, in four games.
Of all the teams to get swept in the first round, you’d be crazy to peg the Tampa Bay Lightning as an option. But here we are. The Lightning become the first team in NHL history to win the President’s Trophy and not win a single game in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
It’s tough to try to make sense of something like this. On the one hand, the Columbus Blue Jackets were no team to take lightly. They went all in at the deadline adding Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel to an already well-equipped cast that included Artemi Panarin, Cam Atkinson, Seth Jones, and Josh Anderson. Despite all that, Columbus knew they were the underdog and that it would take heavy and consistent play to be successful.
It also helped that Sergei Bobrovsky turned things on at the right time. As good as the Blue Jackets play, they don’t win without Bobrovsky who made a number of key saves ahead of the team’s comeback in Game One as well as weathering the storm in the second half of the third period in Game Four.
Now, on the other hand, it’s the TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING! What happened to this team? Why did they shut down? Why did it look like nothing they could do work? The Lightning had injuries in Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman, but that can’t be all it right? And here’s where stats, be it regular or advanced, can’t help you.
The Lightning virtually clinched a playoff spot in November, and their sights were on the playoffs. Other teams fell victim of this mindset as well with the Winnipeg Jets and Toronto Maple Leafs not having the optical dominating seasons many thought they would have. At the same time, there were moments throughout the year where they would have to fight.
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Tampa never had to fight. They walked into every game knowing they would win. Even when Vasilevskiy was injured, and Louis Domingue would start, they would score their six goals, and the game was over. Columbus had an entire season filled to the brim with adversity.
The news with Panarin, Bobrovsky’s early issues and his likeliness to leave in free agency, pressure on Jarmo Kekäläinen to make a decision whether to sell at the deadline to get assets for them or make a run for the cup regardless of the risk, making those deals but seeing the team struggle to put things together, and the Blue Jackets having to scratch and claw their way to the eighth seed.
Adversity is a word thrown around a lot but that was what Columbus had in front of them all season, and that’s what helped them win. The Tampa Bay Lightning didn’t.
The Montreal Canadiens would’ve been in a similar position. Going into a season with no expectations yet succeeding after trading away their captain, having Price go back to his stellar ways while Shea Weber recovers from his offseason procedures ahead of schedule. All the back and forth with Paul Byron, the issues with the powerplay, and the fact that it took until the very end to decide whether they made the playoffs or not.
Adversity was in the eyes of the Habs as well. Does that mean they would’ve defeated Tampa? That’s a difficult question, but they would’ve taken it to them as equally as Columbus did.
The lesson for the Montreal Canadiens is to never feel comfortable no matter where they end up being. The team is going to have more skill with a new set of rookies looking to contend for spots while current players look to improve their performance from the year before. That could propel them to be one of the better teams in the East but this time have a playoff spot attached to that.
Once they’re in the playoffs, they can’t forget who they are and what they did to get to where they are. Watching the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round, it looked as if they lost sight of that and allowed the Columbus Blue Jackets to dictate the course of the series after that opening period in Game One.
The regular season is important for individual feats and slotting in the standings, but after Game 82, all that is out of the window. Columbus defeating Tampa Bay proved that. All that matters is what happens when you step on the ice with ‘Stanley Cup Playoffs’ painted on the ice, and the Montreal Canadiens should pay attention to what happened here and keep it in mind for the future.
Next. Free Agency and the Draft. dark
No one wants to be out early or out first. As long as the Montreal Canadiens value the importance of fighting until the very end, they won’t be.