John Kreiser
The Tampa Bay Lightning did everything but outscore the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference First Round series on Sunday night. Unfortunately for the packed house of 19,092, the score is what matters – and the Canadiens got a fluky goal by Alex Newhook with 8:53 remaining in the third period to earn a 2-1 victory and a second-round series against the Buffalo Sabres.
Newhook broke a 1-1 tie when he picked up the carom of Lane Huston’s shot off the end boards to the right of Andrei Vasilevskiy. While still behind the net backhanded the puck out of the air, off and the Lightning goaltender’s back and into the net. It was his first goal of the series.
That was one of just nine shots on goal in the game by the Canadiens, who were outskated and outplayed. They went nearly 27 minutes without a shot on goal in one stretch that included a shotless second period. Montreal became the first team since shots on goal became an official stat in 1959-60 to win a playoff game without reaching double figures.
“They had two, we had one,” defenseman Ryan McDonagh said. “It’s tough to put into words how this ended up.”
Montreal rookie goaltender Jakub Dobes preserved the lead with a handful of excellent stops after Newhook’s goal. He finished with 28 saves to earn First Star of the Game honors. Dobes made excellent stops on shots by Oliver Bjorkstrand and Jake Guentzel shortly after Newhook’s go-ahead goal. He also got his toe on a low rocket by James with less than five minutes remaining.
The Lightning lost their fourth consecutive first-round series. Their last win came in the 2022 Eastern Conference Final, when they defeated the New York Rangers in six games. The Canadiens won a series for the first time since defeating the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2021 Semifinals. They lost to Tampa Bay in the Final.
All seven games were decided by one goal, and four went into overtime.
“All you can ask of your team, whether it was the Olympic tournament or a best-of-7 playoff, is to get better as you go,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said, “and I thought we got better as we went. I thought tonight we played our best game of the series.”
Lightning season ends with Game 7 loss to Canadiens
The Lightning outshot the Canadiens 9-4 in the opening period and controlled play for most of the first 20 minutes. Dobes made his best save with less than five minutes remaining when he denied Gage Goncalves on a backhander from in front after the Game 6 hero slipped through the defense.
But it was the Canadiens who got on the board first, with the help of a fortunate bounce.
Defenseman Kaiden Guhle took a nothing-special from the left point that Suzuki deflected in the slot. It was headed wide but hit Lightning defense J.J. Moser and went past a defenseless Vasilevskiy at 18:39. The goal, his first of the series, gave Montreal a 1-0 lead.
The second period belonged completely to Tampa Bay. The Lightning outshot the Canadiens 12-0, as Montreal failed to register a shot on goal in a playoff period for the first time in franchise history. Tampa Bay spent most of the period in the Montreal zone and finally tied the game 1-1 at 13:27.
Neither team scored on its first power play. But the Lightning capitalized on their second opportunity after Guhle was called for grabbing Jake Guentzel at 12:33. Coach Jon Cooper went with his second power-play unit and was rewarded when Goncalves set up Charle-Ehouard D’Astous for a slapper from just inside the blue line.
James got his stick on the shot and deflected it up and past Dobes, who had no chance.
Montreal got its second power play at 15:22 when the Lightning was called for having too many men, but the Canadiens again failed to generate much pressure. Neither team was credited with a shot on goal in the final six minutes. For the fifth time in seven games, the score was even after 40 minutes.
Dobes preserved the tie 5:10 into the third period with a big stop on Goncalves from the slot.
Vasilevskiy finally had to make a save 5:34 into the third period when he stopped Suzuki’s long snap shot. The Canadiens began to generate more pressure, with the Lightning blocking four shots in a 12-second span near the midway point of the period.
Newhook’s goal stunned the crowd, and the Bolts couldn’t find the answer this time despite a 7-3 edge in high-danger chances and a 32-12 domination of all scoring chances for the game, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“Sometimes you win the game and not the score,” Cooper said. “But it’s Game 7. There’s no moral victory in that.”
Key takeaways after Lightning season ends with 2-1 loss to Canadiens
Chasing but not catching Montreal
The Lightning’s loss wasn’t due to a lack of effort. But they spent the whole series chasing the Canadiens.
Montreal scored first on Sunday, the fifth time in seven games that the Canadiens got the opening goal; one of the two times the Lightning scored first was their 1-0 overtime win in Game 6. Montreal won Games 1, 3 and 5, meaning that they never took the ice in a game trailing in the series.
The Lightning lost three of four home games, including one in which they outshot Montreal 29-9.
“You have about 30 shots and you give up nine,” center Brandon Hagel said. “I don’t know if that’s ever been done before in a Game 7 — win a game on nine shots. But that’s not the point. I mean, you lose three home games, it’s gonna be tough to win a series.”
The Canadiens outscored the Lightning 16-15 in the series and safeguarded their net after Newhook’s series-winner.
“They got the lead and protected it,” Cooper said. “When they broke down, their goalie was there.”
Fourth line stepped up when stars struggled
One reason the Canadiens won was that they shut down the Lightning’s big guns – Nikita Kucherov, Jake Guentzel, Brayden Point and Hagel – when it mattered most.
Kucherov had six points in the first four games but none in the final three. Hagel had just one assist in Games 5-6-7 after scoring six times in the first four. Guentzel’s goal in the second period of Game 5 was the last of his eight points in the series. Point, a three-time 40-goal scorer before dropping to 18 this season, had just one point – a goal in Game 3.
The line of Goncalves, James and Bjorkstrand was the reason the Bolts had a chance to win the series. James scored his first of the series in Game 5, had the primary assist on Goncalves’ OT winner in Game 6 and scored Tampa Bay’s lone goal in Game 7. Goncalves assisted on both of James’ goals in addition to his series-extending goal on Friday.
What’s next for the Lightning?
This is the most painful of Tampa Bay’s four straight first-round losses. The Lightning were largely outplayed in the first three, losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs in six games in 2023 and in five games to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in 2024 and 2025.
Tampa Bay doesn’t figure to make a lot of changes to a team that’s been among the NHL’s best for nearly a decade. Kucherov struggled in the final three games but still had 44 goals and 130 points (and was plus-43) in 76 regular-season games. Hagel scored a career-high 36 goals and has at least 30 goals in three of the past four seasons. Vasilevskiy is a Vezina Trophy finalist and likely to win the award given to the NHL’s best goaltender for the second time.
James and Goncalves showed they have the potential to play higher in the lineup. Moser has become an excellent defenseman.
One question is whether GM Julien BriseBois can find a way to keep Moser’s partner, Darren Raddysh, who had a career year with 22 goals and 70 points while earning just $975,000. He’s sure to get plenty of big-dollar interest. The Lightning have less than $14 million of cap room for next season, according to Puckpedia. How much they’ll be willing to spend on Raddysh will be a major question.
Stat shots
This was the 105th of the 202 Game 7s in NHL history to be decided by one goal.
Montreal improved to 16-9 in Game 7s. The Canadiens are 8-6 on the road, the most Game 7 wins away from home.
Cooper lost in Game 7 less than three months after he coached Team Canada in its 2-1 overtime loss to Team USA in the gold medal game at the Winter Olympics. His teams lost both games despite a combined 71-37 advantage in shots on goal. “As soon as that last buzzer went, that’s the feeling I had, I’ve seen this movie before,” he said .
Vasilevskiy started his 120th consecutive playoff game. The last time the Lightning started a playoff game with a different goaltender was May 13, 2016, when Ben Bishop was injured in the first period of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Only three goaltenders in NHL history have started more consecutive playoff games than Vasilevskiy: Martin Brodeur (194), Patrick Roy (137), and Henrik Lundqvist (129).
Dobes is the fifth rookie goalie in Canadiens history to win a Game 7.
Tampa Bay’s loss means that there will not be a Florida-based team in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2019. The Lightning (2020-2021-2022) and Panthers (2023-2024-2025) each won twice and lost once in in the past six seasons.
