Montreal Canadiens: Five Takeaways Following Game 3 of Stanley Cup Finals

It was the first Stanley Cup Finals game to take place in Montreal in 10,250 days and boy was it a forgettable one. The Tampa Bay Lightning struck early and often to dismantle the Canadiens 6-3 and take a 3-0 stranglehold in the series.

Here are the five takeaways from Game 3. Four of them are negatives and with them now in a do-or-die situation, they will need to put this past game behind them and move forward.

1. Falling Behind Early- Negative

The 3,500 people in attendance were super pumped prior to the puck drop. Even with the team down 2-0 in the series, the city was filled with energy and both inside and outside of the Bell Centre were ready to go. That lasted about 1:52 seconds from puck drop when Jan Rutta scored the opening goal of the game. The seeing-eye shot beat Carey Price over his blocker and the Lightning was on the board first for the third consecutive game.

It got worse about nearly two minutes later after Eric Staal took a delay of game penalty, Victor Hedman’s shot from the point on the powerplay squeaked by Price, giving them a 2-0 lead. This forced head coach Dominque Ducharme to call an early timeout to rally his troops. No one could have foreseen that in the first five minutes, at home in a key game, that the Canadiens would be down two and Ducharme would need to call a timeout to settle things down.

Despite settling down for the last 15 minutes of the first period in which the Habs responded with a goal of their own, captain Shea Weber described the game the best.

For Game 4 the start will be extremely important and getting the all-important first goal will really help Montreal settle in.

2. Carey Price Looking Shaky – Negative

We all knew it would not be easy to take down the defending champions. However, the one thing that could not be predicted would be how shaky Carey Price would look in the series. By no means am I blaming Price for the team going down 3-0. The Canadiens have played one really good period in three games and even in that period, they were outscored. Price was the Canadiens’ top choice to win the Conn Smythe Trophy heading into this series, so it’s easy to say that without him they probably would not even be here.

That being said, it’s hard to look at what has happened in this series and not single out Price. He’s looked shaky playing the puck, which is usually one of his strengths. He’s given up 13 goals in three games giving him a goals-against average (G.A.A) of 4.3 in this series. The Rutta and Hedman goals were shots that Price usually would have stopped in the previous three rounds. You can say the Lightning are getting a lot of good bounces, but they have also been the better team.

When the team needed a big save these playoffs, Price has always come up big and in some cases has stolen a game or two. In the cup finals, he has not played at his best and even he knows that.

3. Too Many Mistakes- Negative

Even though I just brought up Price’s play being a factor, the guys in front of him have not helped him out either. After playing some excellent hockey over the last month to get to this point, things have somehow just unravelled out of nowhere. The constant defensive pressure has gone, they are losing puck battles, but most importantly the mental mistakes have become so apparent in this series.

Whether it was the bizarre setup on the 4-on-3 powerplay in Game 2. Or the defensive gaffes of Ben Chiarot and Joel Edmundson the team has gone from playing nearly mistake-free hockey to one where mistakes are costing them greatly.

In Game 3, there was a huge mistake that led to every one of the Lightning’s goals. Josh Anderson had two chances to clear the zone and failed too leading to the Rutta goal. Eric Staal took a mindless delay of game penalty leading to the second one. A bad line change led to a 2-0 that resulted in the third goal. A giveaway at the blue line led to a 2-on-1 goal for the fourth goal. The fifth and sixth goals came off turnovers and careless defensive plays. I mentioned in my last article that the small mistakes were proving too costly, now it has become a combination of all the mistakes that are literally handing this series to the Lightning on a silver platter.

4. Able To Score More Than One Goal – Positive

The one small positive to come out of the game was the for the first time this series the Canadiens were able to score more than one goal on Andrei Vasilevskiy. Phillip Danault opened up the scoring for Montreal with a beautiful shot high blocker side for his first of the playoffs.

Nick Suzuki continued to shine, scoring his seventh goal of the playoffs and second of the series with a sneaky shot that beat Vasilevskiy underneath the pad. Lastly, Corey Perry scored a beautiful goal high over the shoulder to cut the lead to 5-3 at that time. The Canadiens had two days off before playing Game 4. They will have to make changes both in personal and in the way they attack. The one thing that they can look at as something to build on is that their ability to score goals in Game 3 can hopefully translate moving forward.

5. Needing To Change Things Up- Negative

It is somewhat understandable why the Canadiens have not tinkered much with the roster over the last month because of how well they were playing and all the winning they were doing. Alex Romanov came in for two games because of the injury to Jeff Petry, but outside of that, there have been very few changes. Meaning guys like Jon Merrill and Eric Gustafsson have been in the lineup for most of the playoffs.

Following the abysmal Game 3 performance, there have to be lineup changes. According to multiple reports, it sounds like there will be three changes. Merrill, Gustafsson, and Jesperi Kotkaniemi are all out, and Romanov, Brett Kulak, and Jake Evans are coming in. Not only that but they are playing around with the lineups, and moving some guys around to try and get more of a balance.

That is a very tough decision to make down 3-0 in a series and playing for the Stanley Cup. Only time will tell if these moves will pay off, but one thing is for sure, these moves come out of desperation.

After playing incredible and inspired hockey up to this point, the trains have fallen over the tracks and hopefully, these moves get them back on the right side.