In Montreal, Jeff Petry scored for the Canadiens for an early 1-0 lead and then the rest of the Habs’ offense disappeared in a 3-1 loss to the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I thought for the first good chunk of the first period we were executing and we were playing our game,” Petry said. “And then towards the end of the first we kind of got away from it.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 33 saves in the win
“After they scored that power-play goal, I think we got our game going and [Vasilevskiy] made some big saves for us, and our PK was outstanding for us the rest of the way,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said.
The Bolts improved to 3-2-1.
“We still have a long way to go in our game, but in saying that, I thought the guys gamed it out,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “And for the most part, they made a lot of the right plays when they should have and it turned into two points.”
Steven Stamkos (power play) and Tyler Johnson scored for the Lightning.
Braydon Coburn struck on a delayed penalty at the end of the second period with the Canadiens stuck on the ice for nearly two minutes.
“I thought we did a great job of hemming them in the zone, and as you could tell on the goal, we were the beneficiaries of getting on the ice against some tired players,” said Stamkos, who had the primary assist on the goal. “So it was a great change, we were able to get some fresh legs out there and we capitalized. … That kind of gave us the momentum heading into the second.”
The Lightning continue their six-game roadie with a match in Boston on Thuresday. They have won two of three on the trip.
[WATCH: All Lightning vs. Canadiens highlights]
Carey Price made 19 saves in the loss.
“That line had both goals scored on it, 5-on-5, and they weren’t very good tonight,” Canadiens head coach Claude Julien said. “They spent two minutes in our own end in the first period, so we had to make some changes. So you saw Drouin move, you saw Kotkaniemi move. So we tried to make some changes in order to get our team going. I thought the third period was good, but we weren’t able to capitalize on our chances.”
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