Gone are the days when the Canadiens could sweep the Bolts 4-0 in the playoffs when they were vulnerable without their regular goalie Ben Bishop (2014). Gone is Ben Bishop as well now plying his trade in Dallas but he's been replaced with an even better goaltender, Andrei Vasilevskiy who's only started 35 games this season (breaking an ankle will do that to you) but won 24 for the 5th rank in the league in wins, the leader Marc-André Fleury has 29 wins but he's played 51 games. The Lightning’s number 1 has a strong record with a 2.39 GAA and a .927 save percentage and what this means in short is that the Habs are in for a challenging night. They only managed to get one shot by Pekka Rinne in Thursday night's loss and they didn't exactly look like a massive offensive threat.
Meanwhile, Tampa Bay is firing on all cylinders, they're comfortably installed at the very top of the league's standings and they've got a 15 points cushion. It should also be noted that while the Canadiens struggled against the Predators, the Lightning were eviscerating the Dallas Stars 6-0. Nikita Kucherov is leading all players in points this year with 92 while Brayden Point and Steven Stamkos are also in the top 10 with 74 and 69 points respectively. In comparison, not a single Habs player has reached the 50 points mark. Domi is ever so close at 49 and Drouin is getting there at 46 but it's safe to say that the Habs just cannot match Tampa's fire power.
If Montreal is to leave the Amalie arena with some points, it will once again take heck of a showing by Carey Price but in 33 match-ups against the Bolts throughout his career, Price only has 13 wins. However, he got away with the victory in 2 of the last 5 games pitting the two teams. So far, there's been one duel feauturing Price with Tampa this season and the Lighting skated away with the 2 points thanks to a 4-1 win. In the other match-up the Bolts won 6-5 while Niemi was in Net.
The Canadiens only had an optional skate this morning but Claude Julien has already confirmed that there will be no line-up changes tonight. Therefore these will be the lines and pairing featured:
Drouin - Danault - Gallagher
Tatar - Domi - Shaw
Lehkonen - Kotkaniemi - Armia
Deslauriers - Thompson - Weise
Mete - Weber
Reilly - Petry
Kulak - Benn
While Carey Price will of course be manning the net. With just over a week left before the trade deadline, Charles Hudon and Matthew Peca are still on the outside looking in, honestly, I hope Bergevin trades Hudon away. He's young and he clearly doesn't feature in the team's plans. Sitting on the press gallery at that age is just awful, those are the years during which you are meant to prove yourself in the NHL and if you don't play, you don't get that opportunity.
Puck drop is scheduled for 7:00 PM and there's nothing left to do but wait and hope that the Canadiens can pull this off. They may be in the 1st Wild Card spot right now but Boston is pulling away with a 5 points lead in third of the Atlantic (although they do have a game in hand) while the Hurricanes are closing in on a playoff spot sitting a point behind the Pens and 3 points behind Montreal (they've played one extra game though). Buckle up ladies and gent this will be a tight race to the finish!
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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