Home HOCKEY NHL Tampa Bay Ends Seven-Game OT Losing Streak to Tie Series

Tampa Bay Ends Seven-Game OT Losing Streak to Tie Series

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Tampa Bay Vs Montreal
Lightning give Canadiens taste of their own medicine in OT thriller

The Lightning and Canadiens combined for 46 penalty minutes before J.J. Moser’s OT winner gave Tampa Bay a 3-2 Game 2 victory Tuesday night.


Nikita Kucherov snapped a 16-game playoff goal drought and J.J. Moser won it in OT as the Lightning beat the Canadiens 3-2 to tie the series 1-1...

  
The Tampa Bay Lightning got revenge on the Montreal Canadiens in overtime, taking Game 2 3-2 on Tuesday night.


J.J. Moser scored his first playoff overtime game-winner. Tampa snapped a skid of seven straight overtime playoff losses with the thrilling win.






How It Happened

Montreal controlled the first half of the opening period, holding Tampa Bay without a shot on goal for the first 10 minutes.

 
But the Lightning were still first to strike.

  
Brandon Hagel scored on Tampa’s first shot of the game to make it 1-0.




It was Hagel’s third goal of the playoffs, with Jake Guentzel adding his fourth assist. It’s the 15th time the Lightning have scored on their first shot - most of any NHL team since 2010.


Both teams were involved in a near full-out brawl that eventually gave the Canadiens a power play - and they capitalized.


Lane Hutson beat Andrei Vasilevskiy from near the blue line to tie it 1-1 with his first career playoff goal.

 
Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield each recorded their third assist of the playoffs.




Just a couple of minutes later, the Habs were back on the power play for the rest of the first period.


The teams combined for 30 total penalty minutes in the first period alone, with 12 players sent to the sin bin. Yanni Gourde and Corey Perry each went twice for Tampa.


Gourde took his second penalty of the game after the first-period whistle, handing the Habs their third power play to start the second period, but they came up empty.


The scrums kept coming as both teams were out for more than blood. Hagel and Montreal’s Game 1 star Juraj Slafkovsky dropped the gloves, with both getting five-minute majors for fighting.






 
With 1:24 left in the second, the Habs finally got on the board again.

  
Josh Anderson, who scored the first goal in Game 1, put Montreal up 2-1 with their second straight goal.


Anderson joined Jesperi Kotkaniemi as the second Habs player in the past 15 years to score in each of the team’s first two playoff games.


 

Montreal, 1-for-3 on the power play through two periods, went on the PP a fourth time with 40 seconds left and started the third with a man advantage, but couldn’t convert.


Even as tempers cooled in the second, both teams entered the final frame with 46 combined penalty minutes.


Kucherov had gone 16 playoff games without a goal - that ended Tuesday night.

  
The Lightning star tied it 2-2 on a wraparound with 7:27 left in the third.


 
 
Kucherov now has the fourth-most playoff game-tying goals (29) by a non-USA-born player, behind Jaromir Jagr (47), Alex Ovechkin (34), and Evgeni Malkin (33).


With 2:15 left in the third, Scott Sabourin (TB) was first assessed a five-minute major for interference, but it was downgraded to a two-minute minor after review. The Canadiens couldn’t capitalize on the golden opportunity.




It came back to bite them as Moser scored the game-winner to even the series.

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