That’s one

In Tampa, the Lightning and Montreal Canadiens still need to win just one more game.

One to end the Stanley Cup Final, the other to extend it one more game.

On Monday night, Josh Anderson pushed the Final to Game 5 with an extra effort goal in overtime for a 3-2 win for the Habs.

Montreal is now down 1-3 in the series and it seems a bit familiar to the first round series with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“It’s no surprise anymore,” Montreal head coach Dominique Ducharme said. “Anything that happens right now and for a while, we just take it and look at it and say, ‘It’s probably our destiny.’

“It’s been crazy, but we’re a crazy bunch of guys in here.”

Anderson’s acrobatic goal in the extra session seemed inevitable when the Canadiens killed off a double minor assessed to Shea Weber at the end o regulation.

“This whole season has been kind of chaotic, kind of hectic,” Montreal’s Corey Perry said. “We’ve kind of gone through everything between COVID, the way we played some nights, to everything. And now, yeah you’re right, we are potentially going into a hurricane.

“… We get to play that game tomorrow night and then come back here. So you know we’re looking forward to the challenge that’s ahead of us and we’ll be ready.”

While goalie Carey Price was tasked with carrying the blame for the 0-3 series deficit, he went about his business in Game 4 and backstopped the win.

“He definitely gave us a chance last night to get our feet wet and then start our engine,” Perry said. “It was a little slow to begin with, they came out, they, you know, put a lot of pressure on us. I don’t know if we gave up too many quality scoring chances, I’ll have to watch again.

“At the end of the day, they did take it to us for the first half of that period, but we found a way to be resilient, he made some big saves, and then Josh got that big goal to really start us and get us going and feel comfortable about our hockey game.”

Wednesday night the Final returns to Tampa for Game 6. Two teams gripping their sticks a little tighter than Monday night.

“I think you look at the playoffs as a whole and there’s ups and downs and peaks and valleys, momentum shifts here, momentum shifts there,” Perry said. “You just have to be ready to play that next game. You know they’re going to be playing at their best. So you have to come out, you have to have energy, you have to be confident, you have to play to win and not to lose, and that’s kind of will be my message to the guys tomorrow.”

For the Canadiens, it’s win and move on, for Tampa, it’s win and it’s done.

“We missed an opportunity last night. Our group knows that,” the Lightning’s Ryan McDonagh said Tuesday. “And you turn the page pretty quick here this morning and you realize what a great opportunity you have here as a team, as a group and as an organization up 3-1 in the series. You’ve got to win one more and you’re going into obviously a place you’re familiar with, with a fan base that’s going to be behind us, and we’ve got to go out there and give it our best effort and try to win one hockey game.”

Perhaps the talk of a sweep crept into the psyches of the Lighting.  Certainly some level of pride must have motivated the Canadiens to avoid being swept from their first Cup Final since 1993.

“I think the staff were sitting there thinking how close we could’ve been, but the players were very similar to last year,” Bolts head coach Jon Cooper said. “They turned the page in the meal room and they’re pros. They understand it’s not a four-game series. It’s a seven-game series. I’m not sitting here saying they were thinking about tomorrow night’s game, but they understand that.

“I heard guys talk about it, like sweeping a team’s hard to do. It’s hard enough just to beat a team, let alone to take them out in four. And we’re in the Stanley Cup Final. Those are rare that that happens. Teams don’t fluke their way to the Final. It’s two good hockey teams playing each other, and the series was meant to go more than four games. Guys understand that.

“But I know that you can see even this morning they’re a focused group. They’ll be ready tomorrow.”

Montreal will need an equally strong effort from Price in Game 5, and an epic performance from their skaters to extend this series back home for Game 6.

Tampa need to win Game 5 or find themselves grinding sticks to saw dust for a local tap room.

“At the end of the day, you hate to lose,” McDonagh said. “Sometimes you hate to lose more than you like to win. That’s probably the identity of this group. We’re all competitors, and it bleeds right down from our coaching staff too, giving us a plan and having us go out and execute and putting in a lot of time and effort. We’ve got to have that mindset right from the start and go from there.”