The Tampa Bay Lightning, with second place in the Atlantic Division and a first-round date with the Detroit Red Wings locked up, had nothing to play for on Saturday, and it showed in their 5-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens. But the game didn’t come without another injury to the Lightning core (because of course), with Tyler Johnson’s first period exit in a totally gutless cheapshot by Greg Pateryn.
I don’t know enough about Pateryn’s 57 games at the NHL level to assess his character or whether this is par for the course or not, but I can tell you that this hit is as unnecessary as it gets. Just, what’s the endgame there besides injuring somebody? Johnson does literally nothing to elicit this response.
Out of the game with what the team termed an ‘upper-body injury’, Lightning head coach Jon Cooper did not hold back in his postgame conference with the media.
"The wonderful thing about this game, why we all love this game, is honor and respect and [Pateryn] put a blatant disregard for both," Cooper said after the loss. "It was egregious what happened.
“There's no place for it. I'm at a loss for words for what happened.”
Cooper also noted that hits like the one Pateryn put on Johnson are ‘season-enders’ and ‘career-enders’, and added that Johnson, whose 38 points this year are sixth-most among Tampa Bay skaters, would not have returned to play even if this game were a postseason affair (giving you an idea of its severity).
The Johnson injury was just an additional kick in the junk on a night that saw the Bolts give up some ugly goals to a woeful Canadiens group, backup netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy stop 24-of-28, and get goals from Ondrej Palat and Jonathan Drouin (his second in as many games).
The Lightning will begin their first-round series with the Wings on Wednesday night.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
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