Lightning played at their best when they weren’t bullying the Canadiens
The Tampa Bay Lightning evened up their first-round series with the Montreal Canadiens Tuesday night, with J.J. Moser scoring in overtime to give the Bolts a 3-2 win and tie things up at one game a piece.
“The guys played hard, they are a determined group,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper told reporters after the game. “When there are obstacles in the way, they’ll try and get through it any way possible.”
The game was filled with plenty of scrums and shenanigans after the whistle, with 52 combined penalty minutes between the two teams. However, there’s a case to be made that Tampa Bay played their best hockey when they weren’t trying to physically intimidate the Habs.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss Game 2 of the first-round matchup and how the two teams stack up as the series heads back to Montreal for Games 3 and 4.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The bully Bolts were running around like crazy in the first half of that game. The Lightning through two games have 41 penalty minutes. It was a parade to the penalty box, and at one point, there was seven guys in the box.
Every whistle, there was a scrum. Tampa Bay was clearly trying to intimidate physically. I will say that I felt like it was a bit much. The Brandon Hagel-Juraj Slafkovsky fight was electric, as I don’t think either side wants their guy sitting in the penalty box for five minutes, considering how good they’ve been in the series.
But I kind of felt like Tampa Bay, when they got their heads screwed back on straight, that’s when they played good. I almost felt like they were trying a little bit too hard to, again, be the bully Bolts.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…