Tampa Bay Lightning show why they are defending champs with dominant, explosive performance in Game 1

Game 1 of the 2021 NHL Stanley Cup Final just highlighted why the Tampa Bay Lightning are an absolute juggernaut.

For all of the romantic notions surrounding the Montreal Canadiens going on the hunt for their first Stanley Cup since 1993, the Lightning wasted little time in firing a reminder to everyone why they are the defending champions.

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Playing in-front of a near fully-packed Amalie Arena, Tampa Bay came out swinging from the first drop of the puck, and they landed blow after blow onto the jaw of the Canadiens, who found out the hard way that there is little margin for error at this point of the postseason.

While the final scoreline of 5-1 doesn’t quite reflect the whole narrative of the game with Montreal doing some things right, there was no getting away from the fact that the Lightning were ready for this moment.

Put that down to the fact that the war of attrition that led them to winning the greatest prize in sports in the toughest of circumstances last year is still fresh in their memories, while the tantalizing prospect of joining the rare company to repeat as champions was a clear motivator from the very get-go.

Nikita Kucherov #86 of the Tampa Bay Lightning. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) /

Tampa Bay Lightning put on a clinic in Game 1 to show why they are defending Champions

Also a factor was the more than 16,000 fans that had packed inside Amalie Arena, making for one hell of an atmosphere, one that only postseason hockey can deliver and one that was dearly missing from last year’s Playoffs and for much of the 2020-21 regular season.

All of that considered, it was no surprise then that the battle-tested Lightning took full advantage of a young Canadiens team that looked completely taken aback by the enormity of the occasion, and stage fright was on full display for much of the first period.

You can’t give an elite team like Tampa Bay an inch and expect to survive, but Montreal did just that and their punishment was another postseason masterclass by Nikita Kucherov who finished the night with two goals and an assist, cementing his legacy as a cold-blooded killer who rises to the occasion come Playoffs time.

Steven Stamkos, who only played a few minutes in last year’s Playoffs, also beat the previously unbeatable Carey Price on the power play as the Canadiens saw their impressive streak of 30 straight penalties killed come to an end.

And therein lies the rub; as good as Montreal has been on the penalty kill this postseason, you can’t give an unstoppable Lightning power play the chance to wreak damage, especially with players like Kucherov, Stamkos and Victor Hedman on the ice.

Victor Hedman #77 of the Tampa Bay Lightning. (Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images) /

If you allow those heavy hitters the opportunity to do what they do best, then they are going to take that invitation and run with it and that was the story of Game 1 as the Canadiens failed to execute and do the little things that add up and then lead to postseason success.

Perhaps overcome by the sheer magnitude of the moment engulfing them, and not beneficiaries of the postseason experience that the Lightning have amassed over the last few years, Montreal suffered stage fright by the ninth degree and they couldn’t even be saved by postseason hero Price, who had his eyes taken away from him with the Lightning doing a superb job of setting screens and getting deflections at big moments.

Of course, you can put a lot of money on the fact that Price will bounce back with a vengeance and have at least a couple of monster games, while maybe the Canadiens just needed to get the jitters out of the way early and perhaps we will see them return to the well-oiled machine that made a habit of grinding teams down in previous rounds this postseason.

They can also look to recent history for inspiration having overcome a 3-1 series deficit to stun the Toronto Maple Leafs in the First Round of this year’s Playoffs, while they can go back further to 1993 when they lost 4-1 to the Los Angeles Kings in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, before coming back to win the cup in five.

That same outcome isn’t likely this year given just how stupidly talented, deep and loaded this Tampa Bay team is, but this series is far from a foregone conclusion and it would be shocking if the Canadiens were not better prepared come Game 2 on Wednesday.

Next. Game 1 was everything that is great about the Playoffs. dark

But, while you shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from Game 1, the one certain lesson we can take away is that the Tampa Bay Lightning are the reigning Stanley Cup Champions for a very clear reason, and this is a roster more than capable of going back-to-back and creating the next great NHL dynasty.

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