Line 1: Brendan Gallagher – Phillip Danault – Artturi Lehkonen or Mission Accomplished?
There was a clear improvement with this line, and Montreal as a whole. There was an obvious effort to get Danault out against Point and it worked pretty well.
Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov were held pointless in the game, which is no small feat. Their winger Ondrej Palat was a different story, but you cannot blame this line for that, and don’t you worry, we will get to that goal. But other than that, Kucherov and Point were fairly quiet. They had some chances, like Stone and Pacioretty did in the last series, but did not register points. That needs to continue.
The problem came when this line became matched up with the Goodrow – Gourde – Coleman line, and a bad habit that seemed like it was left in the past reared its ugly head. The one second alluded to in the introduction was the last second of the second period, where Blake Coleman scored a back-breaker, and it was against Montreal’s first line.
Its all just about effort for the whole 60 minutes. Danault loses the puck at the blue-line, and a Montreal player makes a weak drive-by on the player with the puck. Chiarot makes the poor decision to pinch at his own blue line, probably assuming that there is no time left for Tampa to score. But that put Weber into a 2-on-1 situation with Danault backchecking hard. And Danault made a great defensive play, just the play Coleman made was better, diving to put the puck into the net with mere milliseconds left to play.
The other big story with this line is that Artturi Lehkonen was viciously checked into the boards, and left the game. Former Montreal draft pick Mikhail Sergachev cross-checked Lehkonen the perfect distance away from the boards to injure. Far enough away to get the full bodily momentum into the boards, yet close enough to not have any time to protect yourself. At the time of writing this, there is no word if Lehkonen will return for Game 3, and Jake Evans may take his place, if healthy. Evans missed Game 2, and was skating with a no-contact jersey.
Montreal has surrendered goals in the first and last minute of periods a lot this year. The goals in the last minute really hurt, as there is no time to get the momentum back, and the goal is fresh in everyone’s minds going into the break. It seemed like Montreal had kicked the habit during the playoffs, but this play probably cost Montreal the game. You have to play the full 60 minutes.