The hangover begins for Habs fans
Lightning shows killer instinct in Game 6
TAMPA, Fla. — There will be a savage hockey hangover in Montreal on Wednesday, and anywhere the Canadiens are cheered, a pounding in the temples and an emptiness in the heart.
There will be other emotions, too, covering pretty much the full spectrum.
This is how it is when the Habs’ playoff journey hits a screeching halt, as it did Tuesday in Amalie Arena.
The Tampa Bay Lightning was full value for its 4-1 victory, eliminating the Canadiens with a dominant effort in Game 6 of the best-ofseven Eastern Conference semifinal.
Now, 94 games after it began, the Habs are done. They have been knocked out by the clinical performance of the Bolts, who advance to the Eastern final to face the winner of Wednesday’s New York Rangers-Washington Capitals sudden-death match.
“Um … disappointed. That’s about it,” Canadiens goaltender Carey Price said in the first blush of elimination. And then, incredibly, he added this:
“I didn’t play well enough for us to win the series, you know? That’s more or less what it comes down to. We lost a lot of tight games. I just needed to make that one more save.”
It might have helped had Price been given some offensive support against the Lightning, the Canadiens scoring just 13 goals in the six games. But that’s misleading; discounting their 6-2 victory in Game 4, the Habs managed seven goals in five games.
The power-play was invisible, going 2-for-36 in a dozen games against Ottawa and Tampa Bay.
No matter how good your goaltender is — and Price was brilliant both to get his team to the postseason and on many occasions once there — that kind of meagre production is not going to win. They could only manage 19 shots on Tampa’s Ben Bishop on this night, with only Max Pacioretty finding the range late in the third period.
This was a brilliant, suffocating job by the Lightning of pouncing on Canadiens miscues, cashing their own chances, then almost never giving Montreal more than an inch of ice on which to mount any kind of come back. In the clincher, it was Nikita Kucherov scoring a pair of goals with Steve Stamkos and Ondrej Palat beating Price among their 27 shots on this night.
Sterling first-period chances missed by Brandon Prust, then Tomas Plekanec, were as close as the Canadiens came to making a game out of this. Dale Weise was unable to beat Bishop on a third-period breakaway. By then, the Lightning were ahead, 3-0.
“In this play offs, we’ve been better at taking (Tampa’s) room and space away, being in their face, getting on them early, making sure they don’t come up with speed,” centre Lars Eller had said before the game.
Well, when it mattered the most, Tampa found room and space. And momentum, motivation, desperation, a nearly airtight defence, a killer instinct …
“They played better than us today. You’ve got to give them credit,” defenceman P.K. Subban admitted.
“This is the playoffs. It’s about emotions, it’s about elevating your game physically and making sure your battle level is at a point where you can be a difference-maker on the ice.
“You can’t afford to have passengers. Everybody’s got to be a leader, and today I don’t think we had enough. We didn’t do enough to beat a good hockey team. We knew they were going to come out with their best effort tonight, and we didn’t match it.”
The Canadiens fought to dig out of the 3-0 pit in which they found themselves after three games, winning a pair and giving themselves a chance to bring the series back to the Bell Centre for a winner-take-all Game 7.
“That could have taken the air out of a lot of teams, to lose like that and be down three,” Eller said, the Habs’ backs slammed to the wall with 1.1 seconds left in Game 3.
“But we have a lot of experience in this room. We’ve been through a lot. A lot of times we’ve shown we’ve been able to get back up, even though we’ve been down.”
To Price, the question was put: Was that 3-0 crater too deep from which to finally escape?
“That’s not really an excuse,” he said. “We put ourselves down oh-and-three.… It’s just kind of hard to choke down. I didn’t come up with a couple of saves I needed to make to give us that opportunity (to win).”