MONTREAL — Where we left off was with the Montreal Canadiens coming apart in a 6-3 loss at the Bell Centre on Friday. A loss that has given the Tampa Bay Lightning a chance to win their second consecutive Stanley Cup and become just the second team in history to hoist it as visitors to Montreal.
Where the Canadiens must pick up, down 3-0 in this series with a chance to extend it and send it back to Tampa Bay, is in banding back together. It’s as much about that as it is anything tactical.
We would suggest those things aren’t mutually exclusive, either. Their system is designed to have them play as a group of five in every zone, to play in close support both offensively and defensively, and they adhered to it so well in beating the Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets and Vegas Golden Knights because they dedicated themselves to playing for each other.
Now, with their season once again hanging in the balance, that’s precisely what the Canadiens must focus on again.
“It’s pretty special,” said Josh Anderson on Sunday, describing the relationships he’s formed with his Montreal teammates over the last eight months.
“All the guys in this locker room, the management, the staff, the players — it’s a family. It’s a bond that the guys have been through a lot this year. We stuck together and we made it this far. We got one more job to do, and that’s all to come together and just take it one game at a time, keep chipping away and hopefully we’ll have success and bounces will start going our way.”
They haven’t been there in this Final, which started on an ominous note with Joel Armia placed in COVID-19 protocol due to a false positive.
But that’s the stuff you can’t control, and the Canadiens have done well to focus on what they can to author one of the most unexpected runs through the playoffs in recent memory.
They were the 18th-ranked team in the NHL this season, a team that began an abbreviated training camp with seven new players, a team that jumped out of the gate and announced itself as a force to be reckoned, and a team that went through so many trials before finally stamping their ticket to the playoffs in the penultimate game of their schedule. Coaches were fired, COVID-19 hit just over halfway through and their schedule became unmanageable as key player after key player dropped to injury.
And then the playoffs started. Before five games were played, the Canadiens appeared dead to rights.
But from down 3-1 to the Maple Leafs, they showed just how close of a group they really are.
“I’ve been saying it for a while now, even before the playoffs,” said coach Dominique Ducharme on Sunday, “At the end of the regular season, we faced a lot of adversity. I said we have a great group, and that group has grown stronger together throughout the moments, adversity and facing those situations. And we show it every day.
“And sometimes, you know, we lose a game or it doesn’t go exactly like you wanted, but there’s one thing that’s for sure, it’s not a lack of trying. It’s not a lack of will. Our guys are dedicated to the group. And they showed that (Saturday) again, (and Sunday) and they’re going to put it on the ice (Monday).”
He’s tweaked the power play, he appears to have a lineup change or two in mind — even if he wouldn’t confirm them — and he’ll definitely hammer home some key technical adjustments to focus on against this formidable Lightning team that’s made his Canadiens pay for virtually every mistake they’ve made in this series.
But this isn’t as much about the Xs and Os at this point. Not with a challenge this steep and the pressure boiling over.
Jeff Petry feels the Canadiens know how to approach it.
“We’ve faced challenges before and we’re not looking at the end result,” Montreal’s top defenceman said. “We’re looking at one game (Monday), take it day by day and one game at a time. I think everybody believes in our group in here. One day at a time, one game at a time, we’ll go from there and see what happens.”
It’s as a unified front that the Canadiens must proceed, or Game 4 will be their last of the season.
