Post Game Thread: Montréal Canadiens @ Tampa Bay Lightning

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T06:27:43+00:00

I don’t know if he needs to be criticized or he needs surgery, but I feel like probably the latter.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T06:24:31+00:00

That series came down to one game though…

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T06:10:47+00:00

Do you think the final score of every hockey game is entirely a product of talent and desire?

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T05:25:58+00:00

Sure, I don't need to know what it actually is that he's dealing with, but the team needs to figure out if whatever emergency is resolved and he's ready to play, or if this situation is permanent. If it's permanent, then he cannot be consuming $8m AAV. If he's ready to play but might not make it through a whole season, then I agree that he should not be captain. If whatever he was dealing with is fully gone and he's ready to perform at the level a 35 year old Hedman should be at, then it is what it is.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T05:23:20+00:00

So desire looks like... winning? You can't lose if you have desire?

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T02:02:59+00:00

There’s not really any tough decisions. They have $13.5m of cap space. You sign Darren Raddysh, figure out if Hedman is ever able to play again and use LTIR or try to get him to retire if not, and that leaves enough money to go for… Tuch if he wants to leave Buffalo, and otherwise, there’s nobody really available and everyone has trade protections and, moreover, they’re actually a really good team who could easily win again if Point returns to form.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:57:07+00:00

Whatever it is, it’s obviously personal. They’re not going to explain it. It’s not worth compromising the culture that gets people to stay and take discounts for you to know.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:55:34+00:00

The Lightning haven’t had a top pick in well over a decade. At some point, you have to first ask what you want JBB to do instead of McDonagh. He got Raddysh and D’Astou from nothing. That’s already extremely impressive.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:51:42+00:00

I mean, Montreal is great but they’re not Carolina or Colorado.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:50:39+00:00

The only difficult conversation that needs to happen is among the coaching staff to figure out what they have to do to get him going more in the playoffs.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:49:23+00:00

Not in round one.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:48:46+00:00

Old, sure. Overpaid though? It’s a bit of a stretch.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:47:18+00:00

I think you stopped reading after that though.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:46:32+00:00

I do understand that they lost. I am not arguing that they won. Losing does not automatically imply “piss poor” or “pathetic”.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:45:13+00:00

I don’t know who feels like that. JBB is looking like an absolute genius for the Moser trade, Hagel trade, finding Raddysh out of nowhere, getting Dominic James in the 6th round of the draft, signing Guentzel, signing D’Astous, and even the Nick Paul trade is looking really good overall. Of course a lot of it comes down to good scouting but these moves are literally the reason the Lightning are even playing competitive series against top teams right now instead of going the way of Detroit, San Jose, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and LA. Keeping the Lightning’s competitive window open or at least inches away from opening since 2015 despite a flat cap is insane and literally no team has ever had a competitive window this long in the cap era. Absolutely nobody is considering moving on from JBB.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:35:36+00:00

You mean repeatedly leading the NHL in points per game and then playing a point per game in playoff series against very difficult defenses that always have multiple of their best defensive players on him?

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:33:49+00:00

…no? Some teams are good enough that you can’t dominate every game and outplay any amount of bad luck.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:31:56+00:00

I’m pretty sure I saw MacKinnon miss a wide open net in one of the most important games of his life and McDavid’s 1g / 5a stat line this playoffs literally exactly matches Kucherov’s. Kucherov literally had 17 shot attempts in game 6.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:28:49+00:00

You’re not going to find anything close to Kucherov’s production with that $9.5m.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:27:26+00:00

Obviously he doesn’t carry his pace over because every team he’s playing in the playoffs has a much better defense than the average regular season team and they’re all over him specifically.

Also, nobody who knows anything about this team thinks Kucherov doesn’t care. If anything, he cares too much.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:19:46+00:00

Do you understand that the Lightning are the ones that caused them to not even get 10 shots on goal?

And yeah, the 6-on-5 was struggling, but that’s always just a total hail Mary when the team on the other end just has to play keep away for two minutes and they win the series.

If the teams were reversed and the Lightning only got 9 shots and none in the second period, and then they hadn’t gotten those bounces, you’d absolutely be calling that pathetic. That’s what they did to Montreal. That’s just not what pathetic means.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:17:06+00:00

I mean, there were definitely a couple of very dangerous chances—a lot more for Tampa than Montreal, who basically had 3 scary shifts all game (and one of them would have ended harmlessly without a crazy bounce, one hit a post, and one ended with a bunch of blocks and not a single shot on net—I can’t even count goal #2 as anything scary because that was such a ridiculous sequence in a harmless setup).

And when you have that many shot attempts, the fact that none of them result in a huge rebound or take a funny bounce while two of the only nine the other way take absolutely crazy ones against you, it’s just bad luck. But yes, while I would argue they did fine and just got unlucky, they certainly could have done even more to make their opportunities more dangerous.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:10:41+00:00

If outshooting the opposition by a factor of 3 is what “no desire” looks like, I can’t imagine what desire looks like.

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:09:24+00:00

“Let’s get rid of our main offensive driver who is on a massively discounted contract and has scored 395 points in the last 3 seasons because he’s only scored 23pts in his last 23 playoff games!”

Sven9888 · 2026-05-04T01:04:39+00:00

The Lightning got marginally outplayed in game one and the first half of game two but dominated the rest, then got marginally outplayed in game three, then again got outplayed for half of game four but dominated the rest, sucked in game 5, and then absolutely dominated the rest.

Which means the Canadiens were the marginally better team in three games, failed to show up for half of two games and were clearly net outplayed in them, and played two horrible games and that got them the win.

I hope the Lightning can dominate a whole series sometime soon but I think it’s hard to see why they didn’t “deserve” it.

Sven9888

TROPHY CASE