Because they failed to close things out on Thursday in Tampa, the Lightning are in Montreal this evening for Game Five of their Eastern Conference Semifinal series with the Canadiens. They’ll have a chance to send the home fans at the Bell Centre home crying tonight, as Montreal is once again facing elimination.
As comfortable as a 3-1 series lead looks on paper, the Bolts aren’t exactly on stable footing right now. That 3-1 lead is incredibly deceiving, and it does little to paint an accurate picture of the state of affairs in this series. Tampa has been grossly outplayed in their last two games; this series could easily be 3-1 the other way right now.
But, it’s not.
The Lightning have to forget about last game, which they dropped 6-2 in front of a silent crowd at Amalie Arena, and focus on the task at hand tonight. They’re dealing with a clean slate. A solid 60-minute effort that results in a win would render all the mishaps meaningless. A loss, on the other hand, would give Montreal a ton of confidence; the glimmer of hope they have now would turn into a giant spotlight. This is truly a pivotal game.
If the Lightning are going to claim a second round victory, it appears as though they’ll do it with Brenden Morrow in the lineup. Jon Cooper reportedly noted that there’s a “good chance… that the veteran forward will return to game action. That likely means that Jonathan Drouin, the rookie forward who was essentially a lone bright spot in Game Four, will once again be relegated to popcorn duty. The Bolts had a lot of problems in the last contest, but Drouin wasn’t one of them. No amount of ‘veteran leadership’ could have fixed what went wrong on Thursday.
Because this morning’s skate was optional, it’s difficult to gauge what Cooper will do with the rest of his lineup. Lightning beat writer Bryan Burns took down the skate combinations:
#TBLightning morning skate lines:
Boyle-Filppula-Paquette
Palat-Johnson-Kucherov
Killorn-Drouin-Paquette
Morrow-Namestnikov-Brown
— Bryan Burns (@BBurnsNHL) May 9, 2015#TBLightning morning skate D-pairings:
Hedman-Stralman
Garrison-Coburn
Carle-Sustr
Barberio-Nesterov
— Bryan Burns (@BBurnsNHL) May 9, 2015Simply put, there is no way to understate the importance of this hockey game. As mentioned, a Montreal win would give the Canadiens a boatload of hope and plant a seed of doubt in the Lightning’s mind. A Tampa win, though, would send the Canadiens to the golf course. Thus, anything less than a solid effort and performance from the Bolts tonight would be brutally disappointing.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.