The first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs features a rematch from the 2021 Stanley Cup Final.
Odd as it might be to recall, a pandemic-impacted, 56-game season concluded with the defending-champion Tampa Bay Lightning downing the Montreal Canadiens — the worst team, by record, to make the 2021 playoffs — in five games to claim a second straight title.
The two teams took drastically different routes to this next encounter, with Tampa remaining on Excellence Street, while the Canadiens — who ostensibly lost Shea Weber and Carey Price forever after that trip to the final — executed a full-scale rebuild that’s already producing a second straight playoff appearance.
As for Tampa, while the club has remained one of the league’s best, the Bolts haven’t won a playoff round since advancing to their third straight final in 2022. It’s unfair to say we’re at now-or-never time for this core, but some fingers and toes must be anxiously tapping in T-Bay as coach Jon Cooper and Co. try to find a way back to the top of the mountain.
Or, at least, to a much higher elevation than they’ve been scaling the past three springs.
While these two teams have been in wildly different spots the past handful of years, they put together similarly impressive campaigns in 2025-26. In fact, this clash — the 2-3 battle in the Atlantic, with Tampa holding home-ice advantage — is a meeting of clubs with the fifth- and sixth-best records in the entire NHL.
So, despite a wide gap in terms of playoff pedigree between the squads, the young Habs — coached by Bolts legend Martin St. Louis — and savvy Lightning could produce an extremely close first-round series.
Tampa Bay: 2-2-0
Montreal: 2-1-1
Lighting X-factor: Health
Are they finally healthy, at just the right time? Key Bolts like Anthony Cirelli, Brayden Point, Brandon Hagel and Darren Raddysh all missed at least 10 games this year, while defenceman Ryan McDonagh missed close to half the schedule. Captain Victor Hemdan, who’s been on personal leave since late March, played well under half the season.
Even if Hedman is unable to return for Game 1, Tampa’s roster is in a much better spot than it has been for large chunks of the season.
Canadiens X-factor: Depth of scoring
How much offence can Montreal get from lines that aren’t the top one? The second line, in particular, has struggled to produce when Juraj Slafkovsky joins Nick Suzuki and 50-goal man Cole Caufield on the top trio. Really, the only guy who’s been on the second line all year is Ivan Demidov and, good as he is, Demidov is a rookie who needs support. If Alex Newhook — who missed a huge chunk of time with a fractured ankle — can continue his strong late-season play as a speedy 2C, maybe Montreal can hit on something that supports the big boys.
ADVANCED STATS
(5-on-5 totals from Natural Stat Trick)
Quick, which team led the league in penalty minutes this season? Certainly not the Lightning team which has built a winning legacy this century with skill and smarts, right?
As you’ve surely guessed by now, there’s more backstreet brawler to the Bolts than you might initially imagine, with Tampa racking up more PIMs than any team in the league this year. Hey, when you face — and lose to — the notoriously unpleasant Florida Panthers as the Lighting have in each of the past two first rounds, eventually you develop some pugilistic tendencies of your own.
If Tampa was already inclined to enter the post-season prepared to put their thumb in someone’s eye, playing the Canadiens might stoke the instinct to make this a street fight. Montreal, of course, is nobody’s idea of a mean team and the Lightning may think they can have their way with small stars like Caufield and Lane Hutson.
Andrei Vasilevskiy is a slam-dunk Hall-of-Famer. That said, he’s 4-12 in his past three series with an .882 save percentage. That’s a long way from the Conn Smythe performance “Vasy” threw down the year Tampa beat Montreal in the final, when he had a .937 SV% in 23 games. In fact, during the team’s three consecutive runs to the final from ’20 to ’22, Vasilevskiy had a .928 in 71 post-season contests. He doesn’t have to be that good, but the big Russian needs to improve on what we’ve seen in each of the past three springs.
This is a preview of a series between Tampa and Montreal, but we’re going to bring up the Panthers one more time. It’s hard to shake the feeling there’s a lane here for Tampa to make a run with Florida — almost sure to return, rested and mean as ever next spring — not in the mix this year. Again, it’s not as though the clock is about to strike midnight on this iteration of the Bolts, but they’ve got a kick at it here with Nikita Kucherov still at the sky-high top of his offensive game and a bunch of key players aged about 28 to 32. Put it this way; if the first-round exits at the hands of Florida the past two springs hurt, losing an opening-round series to a club that — good as it is — likely won’t peak for a couple years would be a severe gut punch.
The Canadiens rookie battery of Jakub Dobes and Jacob Fowler have roughly 145 minutes of career NHL playoff experience, with all of them belonging to Dobes from last year’s five-game loss to the Washington Capitals. Goaltending became a big subplot for Montreal this season when incumbent starter Sam Montembeault completely lost his game and never got it back.
However, since play resumed after the Olympic break, Dobes’ .916 save percentage is the third-best mark in the league among goalies with 15 appearances and he was especially stellar in March and early April, posting a .925 SV% in a dozen outings while the Canadiens solidified their playoff spot in a tough Eastern Conference fight. If Dobes, 24, falters, Fowler is the rare 21-year-old who might be able to handle the post-season heat. One of the top young goalies in hockey, Fowler has shown himself to be a capable, calm stopper when given the chance this season.
Coach Martin St. Louis has interesting decisions to make at forward and defence, albeit for different reasons. On the back end, the Canadiens were dealt a tough blow when Noah Dobson — a vital, right-shot defenceman for the team — got injured blocking a shot with his hand in Game No. 80. While there could be some gamesmanship given it’s playoff time, Montreal said last weekend that he’d be re-evaluated after two weeks, which basically takes the team through four playoff contests. Assuming another righty, Alexandre Carrier, can return for Game 1, that leaves St. Louis looking at the likes of Arber Xhekaj, recent AHL callup David Reinbacher and maybe even Adam Engstrom for a final spot on the blue line. Everyone brings something different, so the coach will have to decide which way to play it.
Up front, a handful of guys — Brendan Gallagher, Joe Veleno, Zach Bolduc and Alexandre Texier — have all taken turns being scratched from the lineup. Maybe the series will tell St. Louis how to fill out his lineup card, but the coach has some tough calls to make and could throw different looks at Tampa as the battle wages on.
3. What constitutes progress for Montreal?
As noted, the Canadiens have now made the post-season in two straight years and that fact alone could be seen as a win for a squad that still seemed elbow-deep in a rebuild about 15 months ago. Does Montreal, in its second spring fling, need to win a series to show progress? Alternatively, maybe a tight six- or seven-game loss to a heavyweight like Tampa would suffice as a sign this club continues to move in the right direction.
What it really might come down to for the Canadiens is evaluating if the team, as currently constructed, has what it takes to thrive when the physicality takes a leap. Win or lose, will management leave the series thinking the core has what it takes to eventually make it work at this time of year or will they be left contemplating debilitating holes in the blueprint?