The Montreal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning are playing Game 2 of their NHL playoffs series on Friday night and the matchup comes streaming live from the Tampa Bay Times Forum and will be on TV from CNBC starting up at 7 pm ET and has the team from Canada looking to take a 2-0 series lead and they are trying to win their second game on the road in the Stanley Cup postseason.
The Canadiens took the first game in overtime and that was a 5-4 victory on Wednesday night and now they play on Friday before a return to the Bell Centre in Canada for Game 3 on Sunday and that will be a 7 pm ET game. The Canadiens came into the playoffs after ranking 21st in the league in scoring and they ended up putting in five goals in the first game and part of that was due to the fact that the Lightning are playing without their regular goalie. Steven Stamkos came through with two goals in the game, but it wasn't enough for Tampa Bay to come out on top and they hope to get Ryan Callahan going after making the trade with him and Martin St. Louis.
Stamkos will have to be on fire again on Friday for the Lightning and they will need to be more aggressive, as they were outshot by nearly 20 in the first game. Carey Price was not as sharp as usual, finishing with 21 saves, but nine of those were in overtime and he handled things when it counted and he was able to hold things off enough for Dale Weise to get the winner, which happened to be his first playoffs goal in his career and now the team has a 1-0 lead.
The Lightning have been playing without regular goalie Ben Bishop and they lost him back I early April to an injury and that left Anders Lindback to start and he made 39 saves in the matchup. Montreal is not the most offensively gifted team, but they made it work in Game 1 and now they will try and do it again. The Lighting are already dealing with injuries and now rookie Ondrej Palat had to leave the first game with an injury.
The Lightning come into the game at ninth in goals per game this season and 11th in goals against and they are looking to keep that going on Friday. Montreal is ranked eighth in goals against and fourth in penalty kill percentage and they are 19th in power play percentage.
Check here for the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens live stream coverage.
