A casual fan who looks at a boxscore and sees a 1-0 overtime victory for Team X probably pictures a close game in his/her head. That’s not what happened on Tuesday night in Montreal between the victorious Lightning and the Canadiens.
To say that Tampa Bay totally and completely dominated the Canadiens would be to make light of what actually happened on the ice at the Bell Centre. Words simply cannot describe how well the Bolts played, or how inferior they made the Canadiens skaters look. Had it not been for a Hart-worthy performance from Carey Price, Montreal would have lost in a big way. Consider this possession chart as evidence of both Tampa’s major-league performance and Price’s stellar play:
Save for the score, it really wasn’t a close game.
Particularly encouraging for Jon Cooper and his Lightning troops was the fact that Montreal skaters had no answer for any line they threw out on the ice. The *worst* possession player for the Lightning at five-on-five, again courtesy of HockeyStats.ca, was Mark Barberio, who rocked a 48% Corsi rating; the best was Ondrej Palat at 85%. To put that in perspective, just note that Montreal’s best skater had a 58% Corsi, while their worst boasted a pitiful 10% mark. The contrast there is stunning.
Of course, skaters are only part of the equation – Tampa Bay almost learned that the hard way. Carey Price was, as mentioned, better than good. Anyone who doesn’t think that he should be leading the Hart Trophy race is kidding him/herself. The reality is that the Canadiens would be a very average team without him in net. He is in net. They’re quite good. In this case correlation does equal causation.
Some of the saves he made were out of this world. Perhaps most impressive and noteworthy was a third period stop on Ryan Callahan, who looked like he had a sure goal on his stick:
At some point I’m sure the Lightning skaters just looked skyward and asked whether they were ever going to beat this guy.
The most ironic part about the victory is that it wasn’t even the Lightning who managed to beat Price. He was perfect. He stopped EVERYTHING that came off a Lightning stick. It wasn’t until overtime that he was beaten, and even then it was because a Tyler Johnson pass deflected off his own man and into the net. Only a Canadien could beat Price on this occasion. Even so, the Lightning weren’t complaining.
While Price will certainly (and deservedly) dominate the headlines tonight and through tomorrow, Ben Bishop was also solid and deserves credit for doing what he had to do to keep his team in the game. Not nearly as busy as Price, Bishop managed to stop all 19 shots fired his way in the game. It wasn’t a particularly taxing shutout from a workload perspective, but you can bet he felt the pressure as he went toe-to-toe against arguably, and in this blogger’s opinion, the best goalie in the National Hockey League. Bishop stood strong, which should give him a big boost of confidence for the stretch drive.
With the win, the Lightning now find themselves only one point back of Montreal for first place in the Atlantic. This was a key victory. While the Canadiens still hold a game in hand on the Lightning, it doesn’t hold nearly as much weight as it would have had the Bolts lost this one. The fact of the matter is that Tampa is closing in on first place. Further, the Bolts have extended their lead on the Detroit Red Wings to five points (the Wings still have three games in hand).
Dominance. It’s a beautiful thing.
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. 
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