Lightning prove in Cup final they mean business
If Tampa plays the rest of the series they way they played in Game 1, it really doesn't matter how well the Montreal Canadiens play in the Stanley Cup final. It's over
It’s probably a good time right now to point out that the Montreal Canadiens lost 4-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 1 of the semifinal, so those who already count them out of the Stanley Cup final at this point likely do so at their own peril. But this much we know. If it turns out Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper is right about his team, this series is over.
“I think we have more to give,” Cooper said after his team dismantled the Montreal Canadiens in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final. “A team that has lost Game 1 is definitely going to give us a push and we need to be better than we were tonight to take Game 2.”
That would require the Lightning to improve on almost total perfection. The only goal the Lightning gave up in Game 1 was on a double deflection…off two of their own players. They gave the Canadiens nothing in the first and third periods, pierced their vaunted penalty killing with a late power-play goal and made them pay for their sloppiness with the puck. And having the last line change, Cooper showed why he’s one of the best coaches in the NHL and the man who should lead Canada’s Olympic team in Beijing in 2022.
Canadiens checking center Phil Danault has spent the first three rounds of the playoffs being kryptonite to some of the best offensive players in the game. So Cooper made sure his top line of Brayden Point between Ondrej Palat and Nikita Kucherov did not have to face him. And that served a dual purpose. Cooper instead put Point’s line out against the Canadiens’ best offensive unit – Nick Suzuki between Tyler Toffoli and Cole Caufield – and forced them to play most of the game in their own end, far away from where they could cause any trouble around the Tampa net. The Lightning penetrated Montreal’s vaunted defense corps and caused all kinds of problems in front of Carey Price and when Montreal tried to drag the Lightning into an alley fight – confident (and correct) that the officials would not call anything – the Lightning responded in kind.
Game. Set. Match.
Again, it would be folly to suggest the Canadiens are out of this series. But if the Lightning play the way they did in Game 1, it really won’t matter how well the Canadiens play because the best team in the NHL playing at that level simply cannot be usurped four times in seven games. “Consistency is the key,” Cooper said. “You have your plan, you stick with it and you consistently rock it. If you do that, we like our chances in games, but it doesn’t guarantee results. We have found something that works for us. It doesn’t mean you’re going to win every night, but it’s sticking with that process.”
And part of the ability to stick with that process comes in the
comfort of the knowledge that it works. Cooper rarely throws his lines into a blender. The game plan is almost never altered. They give up a good number of offensive opportunities, but they do so knowing they have a goaltender in Andrei Vasilevskiy who, when everything is said and done and his career is over, is on pace to go down in history as one of the greatest to ever play the game. And that is not hyperbole. That is fact.
There is not an area of the game in which the Lightning are not elite. That is not hyperbole, either. One of the strengths of this team is that it can play the game under any circumstances. And as Steven Stamkos said, it allows the Lightning to play the game without having to worry about what kind of game their opponents are playing. After all, why would you worry about the other team when you know you’re almost assured of victory if you play the game on your own terms?
“We have a game plan and we have a recipe,” Stamkos said. “And if we do the right things, we believe we’re going to get rewarded for it. We have so far to get to this point and I thought we did that in (Game 1). When we’re on top of our game like that, we’re a tough team to beat.”
Check that. Make that an impossible team to beat.