The Montreal Canadiens are in over their heads at the moment, and things don’t look good. The Montreal Canadiens were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Finals after a humiliating Game 3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday.
The Lightning are now one win away from repeating as champions. After beating the Bolts in Game 2, the Habs went home for Game 3, and expectations were high that they could make this series interesting.
However, they played a mistake-filled game, and their season is on the verge of being eliminated. While the Lightning have been dominant in every facet of the game, Montreal has struggled mightily in the Stanley Cup Final.
The Lightning made a statement in the series opener with a 5-1 victory against the Habs at Amalie Arena, with Nikita Kucherov adding to his extraordinary postseason career with a hat trick (2 G, 1 A).
Stanley Cup Finals: Canadiens Still Out to Prove They Belong
Montreal has a rich history, and this view towards a rival in the Atlantic Division is different from one perspective. The Canadiens peaked and then crashed during this abbreviated 56-game season. One week they’d fire their coach, and the next their goalie coach.
They lost captain Joey Value and defenseman Shea Weber to injuries, and then Joel Armia had a positive coronavirus test, further condensing an already tight schedule. They played their final 25 games in only 44 days, losing 15 of them, including 4 of their last 5.
The only reason Montreal made the playoffs was because, in a division that once included all seven Canadian teams, they were only slightly worse than fifth-place Calgary. Lightning Head Coach Jon Cooper said on Monday morning, “They’re exactly where they expected they may be.”
“They didn’t take the same path, so it looks different since they look like the Cinderella crew. But I can’t even fathom the possibility of that happening. Plus, nobody else does that here.”
Marc Bergevin, the general manager of the Montreal Canadiens, often makes the argument that there are two types of players: those that get you in, and those who get you through.
He made significant changes to the team’s roster over the offseason and at the trade deadline, acquiring six Stanley Cup champions, including defenseman Joel Edmundson, backup goaltender Jake Allen, and forwards Eric Staal, Tyler Toffoli, and Corey Perry.
Montreal Canadiens are Nowhere Near the Level of the Tampa Bay Lightning
The Lightning then took a commanding 2-0 series lead despite playing poorly in Game 2 and looking slow with the puck. Nonetheless, they were able to win 3-1 thanks in large part to Andrei Vasilevskiy’s superb 42 save effort.
The Lightning may not have been at their best in recent postseasons, but they have exhibited the one real hallmark of an elite club in any sport: the ability to pull off a win when they aren’t blazing on all cylinders.
The Stanley Cup Final Starts tonight — and the Habs Face Their Toughest Test Yet
The Montreal Canadiens have a chance to make history by becoming the first Canadian team to win the Cup since Patrick Roy’s Habs in 1993 if they win their final four games. Montreal was the last team to qualify for the playoffs, and it was a heavy underdog in two of its three series.
If they were to win all three, it would be one of the most unlikely championships in NHL history. The Canadiens’ postseason performance against the Leafs and Golden Knights, as well as their stunning three-game sweep of the Jets, have shown that they are a far stronger club than their regular season record would have suggested.
They are at home in this setting. The secrets of Montreal’s miraculous run were discussed in our email last Friday. You can get the full story here, but if you don’t have time, I’ll give you the Coles Notes version.
Canadiens goaltender Carey Price is having a career year, the power play is unstoppable, and Montreal is doing a fantastic job of neutralizing opposing teams’ top scorers.
Conclusion
The 2021 Stanley Cup Final pits the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Montreal Canadiens, and the Canadiens are in the perfect mindset to win. “We believe that we aren’t the underdog,” assistant coach Luke Richardson said Sunday during media day for the Stanley Cup Final. So the Canadiens are definitely the underdogs here. To some extent, they may be the greatest underdogs in history.
Yet, it doesn’t mean they can’t pull off an upset in the best-of-7 series against the reigning Stanley Cup champions starting Monday at Amalie Arena (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, SN, TVAS). Nonetheless, knowing this makes their pursuit more meaningful and will increase the significance of a Cup victory, should they achieve it for the first time since 1993.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the regular season was cut from 82 games to 56 games, and all of the action took place within temporarily reorganized divisions. The Canadiens finished the season with a 24-21-11 record. Hope now you are aware about stanley cup finals canadiens still out to prove they belong.
