Canadiens prepared for Lightning’s grit
MONTREAL — Corey Perry knows what to expect when the Canadiens face the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final tonight.
“They’re a heck of a hockey team. I mean, pretty much the same team as last year,” said Perry, who was with the Dallas Stars when they lost to the Lightning in the Cup final last summer in the Edmonton bubble. “It’s going to be a good test for us, but we’re up for the challenge.
“Personally, I don’t think there’s revenge or anything,” Perry added. “It’s a different year. It’s a different team. It’s a new test. We’ll see what happens.”
The Lightning have always been known as an explosive team, but they added some grit last year when they picked up Blake Coleman, Barclay Goodrow and defenceman David Savard at the trade deadline. The result is a team that can match Montreal’s depth.
“You look up and down their lineup, you can start with their goalie (Andrei Vasilevskiy); he’s a worldclass goalie,” Perry said. “And then you have probably one of the top defencemen in the league in (Victor) Hedman. And the list goes on. (Nikita) Kucherov, (Steven) Stamkos. You can talk about them all day long. But they added that grit at the deadline last year and have kind of taken off.”
Vasilevskiy is coming off a 1-0 win over the New York Islanders in Game 7 of their semifinal Friday, and he has a 1.99 goals-against average and a .936 save percentage. That’s a shade better than Carey Price (2.02 goals-against average and .934 save percentage).
Perry and Price have been teammates on several international teams, including Canada’s gold-medal Olympic team in 2014.
“They’re only two-week tournaments. You play five, six, seven games, whatever it is, but you could see in that time frame what type of person he was, what type of character he has,” Perry said. “And then, over this season, you really get to know him. He’s a quiet guy but goes about his business. He’s down to earth. He’s a great person. If you have the time to talk to him, he’ll take the time to talk to you, and he’ll talk to you about whatever you want to talk about. You can’t say enough about him right now.”
The Canadiens lead the playoffs with a 93.5 per cent success rate on the penalty kill, but Perry said the goal will be to stay out of the penalty box.
“Everybody knows what their power play is like and how they can move the puck, the different options they have,” Perry said.
“That’s one way of limiting their chances. But on the other end, you have to play well defensively. You have to check. You have to be in good spots. You have to know who’s on the ice.
“You know their D are going to be jumping into the play, they’re going to be pushing the puck up the ice,” Perry added. “It’s no different than 95 per cent of the other teams in the league. Each night, you have to be on your toes and be ready to play. You take a shift off and that could be the difference in that game.”
Brendan Gallagher also has playoff experience against the Lightning.
“I’ve beaten them in the playoff series, lost to them in a playoff series and both times the margin between victory and losing was so slim, and you know the difference,” Gallagher said.
“Right from Game 1, we’ve got to make sure we’re sharp.”
The shutdown line of Gallagher, Phil Danault and Artturi Lehkonen is tasked with stopping Nikita Kucherov, who is the leading scorer in the playoffs after missing the entire regular season following hip surgery.