The Montreal Canadiens got five chances with the power play in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday.
Slafkovsky’s natural hat trick culminated with his power-play goal 82 seconds into overtime to give the Canadiens a 4-3 win and a 1-0 series lead against the Lightning.
Tampa Bay, which has lost its past three Game 1s after the Florida Panthers won the previous two, tied the score midway through the third.
But a high-sticking call on Jake Guentzel gave Montreal’s momentum-changing power play another chance 21 seconds before the end of regulation.
Slafkovsky’s first power-play goal came in the second and tied the score at 2 after Tampa Bay scored twice in 29 seconds.
His second gave Montreal a 3-2 lead at 5:56 of the third.
His third, which beat Andrei Vasilevskiy from the left circle, won the thing.
“It was pretty nice, nice feeling,” Slafkovsky said. “But we don’t want to go to overtime. Hopefully, we can close out games before that.’’
After the game, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said his team just cannot give Montreal that many key chances.
Montreal had the league’s 10th best power play during the regular season at 23.1 percent.
The Lightning’s penalty kill was third with an 82.6 percent success rate, but as Cooper noted, this is was not some random game in February.
”I had a problem with us,’’ Cooper said, “I mean, we took four offensive zone penalties. Just look at them, that’s not over-aggression; that’s like stupidity on a lot of them.
”That’s on us. That is a game where we just gave them an opportunity to win. This is the Stanley Cup playoffs. This isn’t Game 62. That’s extremely disappointing in the way we conducted ourselves.’’
One thing Sunday did show us was this series could be a classic.
Those worried that the young Canadiens could not hang with a more experienced (and heavier) team like the Lightning were shown otherwise at least in Game 1.
Per the stat sheet, Montreal had two fewer hits (44-42) but did not back down from anything.
Josh Anderson gave the Canadiens the initial lead at 13:24 of the first period and was tied for second on his team with four hits in the game.
Anderson and Yanni Gourde both went to the box for roughing and when Anderson came out, he deflected a Mike Matheson shot in for what looked like a 2-0 lead.
Only the goal came off for the use of a high stick.
Moments later, Anderson hit Charle-Edouard D’Astous hard behind the net leading to a charging penalty.