The Habs will be facing elimination for the first time this season as they get set to enter Game Seven against the Lightning. Here are seven keys to move on to the second round against Buffalo.
1) Survive The First Five: Let’s face it, the Habs are going to be nervous. Most of the team hasn’t played in a Game Seven before and Tampa Bay’s crowd is going to be raucous. Meanwhile, Jakub Dobes has looked a little jittery at the start of a few games in this series, including Friday’s. Getting the lines and defence pairings on for a couple of shifts each will get them settled in and work out some of the nerves. Meanwhile, once Dobes gets a few shots or puck touches, he’ll settle in as he has in other games.
2) Power Play Surprise: Right now, Montreal’s power play strategies appear to be one of two things. One is a cross-seam pass for a one-timer, typically to Ivan Demidov. The second is Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki playing ‘give and give’ on the left side. Normally, it should be give and go but the two of them have been content to pass the puck around while waiting to set up the eventual one-time pass instead of one making a move to try to generate a chance. Do something different, set up a bumper play, or move Caufield to a different spot to force Tampa Bay to shuffle their coverages. Maybe that little wrinkle opens something up for the Canadiens to strike with the man advantage.
3) Get Texier Firing: Alexandre Texier has been a nice surprise in this series. Dropped to the third line, he has actually helped lead that trio to some unexpected success which has played a big role in Montreal getting three wins so far in this series. Texier has scored twice and beaten Andrei Vasilevskiy on some other shots that ultimately missed the net. To me, it feels like Vasilevskiy is struggling to pick up Texier’s shot right away. If that’s the case, try to get Texier teed up a bit more often. He’s averaging 1.5 shots per game in this series. Perhaps doubling that gives him a chance at another key goal.
4) Discipline, Part 1: It should be noted that the Habs have done pretty well on the penalty kill this series as Tampa Bay has only scored on four of 26 opportunities. That’s a shorthanded success rate of 84.6% which is well above their season average. But giving up four-plus power plays per game is risky. This feels like it’s going to be another low-scoring, tight-checking affair so limiting the Lightning’s power play time is going to be critical. In a perfect world, Tampa Bay winds up with three or fewer power plays.
5) Discipline, Part 2: We’ve seen several occasions in this series where Montreal’s defence has tried to do a little too much. Mike Matheson has had some adventures in this series, Kaiden Guhle has gotten too overaggressive at times (leading to goals or scoring chances), and Arber Xhekaj’s positioning has been off at times (including on Friday’s winner). If there’s time and space to make an aggressive play, then go for it smartly. If not, make the safe play. Similarly, this isn’t the game to make an overly aggressive pinch or to go for a big pressure play. Be smart and don’t give the Lightning any freebies. Maybe Noah Dobson returns but he’ll be at less than 100% so even he should be abiding by those guiding principles.
6) Top Line Breaks Through: Whatever iteration of the top line gets used (and probably more than one if Josh Anderson and Juraj Slafkovsky alternate again) needs to win its minutes. Tying them is okay but this is when the top players need to be their best players (and Tampa Bay is no doubt hoping for the same from Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point). If Montreal’s top line wins its minutes, their odds of victory will go up considerably.
7) Status Quo From Dobes: In a Game Seven situation, it’s easy to say ‘win the goalie battle’ as a key to victory. Frankly, it goes without saying. But for Dobes specifically, it’s about not getting too high or too low which he has done a great job of in this series. If he plays at the level he has for most of the six games so far, he’s going to give the Canadiens a good chance to win regardless of what Vasilevskiy does at the other end. (And if he does that and Vasilevskiy has another top performance in him, we could be in for another nail-biter.)
In a series like this, one that has basically been a toss-up each night, there are no singular keys that could swing the game one way or the other. But if Montreal can hit on more than half of these tonight, they should give themselves a solid chance to move on. Puck drop is at 6 PM ET on Sportsnet, CBC, and TVA Sports in Canada and TNT, truTV, and HBO MAX in the United States.