MONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens hold a 2-1 lead in their opening-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, despite a notable absence of five-on-five goals from their top offensive unit of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovský.
While this key line has excelled on the power play, significantly contributing to Montreal’s Game 1 victory, highlighted by a power-play hat trick from Slafkovský, their Game 3 success stemmed from crucial depth scoring—a facet of their game that had been a significant concern leading into the series.
“I don’t think it really matters who scores the goals,” Slafkovský remarked after an optional practice at the Bell Centre on Saturday. “It matters that we win the game.”
Following Game 3, Suzuki faced persistent questions regarding his line’s inability to produce at even strength, a point he himself had acknowledged after their overtime loss in Game 2 in Tampa.
“They’re game planning over there pretty hard on our line,” Suzuki stated on Friday night.
This marks a new phase for Suzuki’s line. Although he has anchored the Canadiens’ top line for several seasons, it is only this year that it has ascended to become one of the NHL’s premier trios, one that now commands specific strategic attention in a playoff series.
Lightning head coach Jon Cooper has tasked his defensive tandem of Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel with shadowing Suzuki’s line, often joined by either Jake Guentzel or Nikita Kucherov.
“It’s a game plan we put in,” Cooper confirmed on Saturday. “I wouldn’t sit here and say everything’s worked for us, but that sure has.”
It’s worth noting that Kucherov has also been limited to a single five-on-five goal in the series, and Brayden Point has yet to register a point at even strength, suggesting Suzuki’s line isn’t alone in its even-strength struggles. Nevertheless, it’s clear the Canadiens’ odds of winning the series improve significantly if their top line starts finding the net at five-on-five.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis has the option to separate Slafkovský from Suzuki and Caufield, a strategy he employed for a substantial portion of the regular season, but he appears disinclined to do so. His confidence in their eventual breakthrough is rooted in their established track record and the understanding that their overall performance extends beyond mere offensive output.
“I mean, where do I start? You’re talking about really elite players,” St. Louis explained. “They have a hard matchup, and I’m OK with who they’re on the ice against. Do I try to help them during the game? Yes, I do. But I’m confident of how responsible they’re going to be, and they’re going to still generate (offence). I feel like they probably want to generate more, but you have three elite players that are trying to answer to the critics without hurting the team. It’s a fine line.
“What if they go explode five-on-five and we lose 5-4? What are we going to talk about? That’s a great job, you got the first line going, but we lose the game. So it’s a fine line. Those guys, they’re always a big part of our success, whether they’re on the scoresheet offensively or not, because they rack up a lot of minutes against some really good players. So, they’re going to be fine.”
Indeed, a key factor enabling Kirby Dach’s newly formed line to score all three Canadiens goals in Game 3 is Suzuki’s line absorbing the most challenging defensive matchups, thereby creating opportunities for the rest of the team. This dynamic extends to the defence, where the third pairing of Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble are posting impressive underlying statistics in limited minutes against Tampa Bay’s secondary lines.
Playoff series are often decided by contributions deeper in the lineup, a trend that has so far benefited the Canadiens. However, at some juncture, their top line will need to overcome its even-strength scoring drought.
A Player Who Understood Dach’s Position
On October 29, 2023, the Canadiens embarked on a three-game road trip, with stops in Las Vegas, Arizona, and St. Louis.
It was Slafkovský’s second NHL season, and after recording an assist in the season opener, he had endured a seven-game pointless streak as he boarded the flight to Las Vegas. Whispers had begun circulating in Montreal suggesting Slafkovský should be reassigned to the AHL, with concerns that the Canadiens were mismanaging the development of their 2022 first overall draft pick. He was clearly struggling.
In that game against Las Vegas, Slafkovský failed to register a single shot on goal or a point, a performance he replicated in Arizona three nights later. Suddenly, the debate about his development and a potential demotion to the minors gained traction not just in Montreal, but across the league.
The pressure on him was intense, and internal discussions emerged about whether sending him to the AHL to regain his confidence was indeed the right move. However, St. Louis was resolute. Not only did he insist on keeping Slafkovský with the NHL club, but in the Canadiens’ very next game, he elevated Slafkovský to the top line, marking his first time playing alongside Suzuki and Caufield.
This decision bore a striking resemblance to St. Louis’s recent move in Game 3: not only keeping Dach in the lineup, but also shifting him back to centre and entrusting him to drive a line with Zack Bolduc and Alexandre Texier.
The surge of confidence Dach experienced from his coach in Game 3 mirrored Slafkovský’s own feelings back in 2023, when he felt isolated and unsupported by everyone except his coach.
“I was just super happy,” Slafkovský recalled. “I kind of felt confident on the inside because I knew he was still trusting me, still giving me the opportunity.”
He readily identified the parallels between his past predicament and Dach’s situation after his overtime errors contributed to the Canadiens’ Game 2 loss in Tampa.
“You can’t even explain how much it helps when your coach trusts you that way,” he elaborated. “Because inside of you, you feel like s—, you feel like the past couple of games didn’t go your way, you’re not really confident at the moment. But when Marty trusts you, I feel like when the game starts, you don’t even think about what happened (before). You just want to prove it to yourself and prove it to him that you deserve to play.
“I feel like that’s what’s been happening here, either with me or Kirby yesterday. It was a beautiful game for him.”
St. Louis himself was not an overnight Hall of Famer. He had to earn his place through sheer determination, and central to his journey was finding a coach willing to place faith in him. Once he received that trust, he flourished and vindicated his coach’s belief. He understands intimately what it feels like to perceive the world as being against you; in his case, it was the hockey establishment, rather than necessarily the fans and media.
While one source of pressure is undeniably louder than the other, both scenarios fundamentally require a coach’s unwavering trust to enable a player to overcome adversity and emerge stronger.
Montreal’s Penalty Kill Adjustments
The Canadiens typically employ a penalty kill strategy characterized by controlled aggression: maintaining defensive structure to deny the centre of the ice, while opportunistically attacking the puck carrier with intensity.
However, this customary approach has been abandoned for the current series.
Whenever Kucherov gains possession, typically on the right half-wall during the power play, a Canadiens forward immediately rushes to pressure him, forcing him into a quick decision with the puck. This strategy was evident in the first period of Game 2 when Alex Newhook aggressively closed on Kucherov during one of two penalties to goaltender Jakub Dobeš. Kucherov swiftly moved the puck down low to Guentzel, who instantly found Point in the slot for the Lightning’s first goal of the series.
Despite that instance, for the most part, Montreal’s tactical shift has compelled the Lightning to modify their power-play scheme, which ideally operates through Kucherov.
“He’s obviously their best player and their quarterback; they want to run it all through him,” noted Canadiens centre Jake Evans. “I guess in a way it makes them have to switch things up and look for different options, which they did fine last game.”
Cooper acknowledged that not every team applies this level of pressure to Kucherov, but he underscored the distinct dynamics of a playoff series, where teams meet up to seven times, compared to a single regular-season encounter.
“Through 82 games and playing 31 different teams, you get to see a whole bunch of different kills,” Cooper explained. “Nobody’s reinventing the wheel, but there are different strategies to it. Some people leave him alone, some people come right at him, and he has this ability to find a way to pick them all apart. But he doesn’t do it all the time.”
This represents a significant deviation for Montreal’s penalty kill unit. They reserve such specialized pressure for only the most elite threats, signaling their clear intent to force any Lightning player other than Kucherov to beat them on the power play.
“Pressure’s tough,” Cooper admitted. “You’ve got to make real skilled plays in a short amount of time and it can be tough.
“But if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s surely (No.) 86.”