Overview
- Tampa Bay, Montreal and Buffalo are level at 102 points in the Atlantic Division, with Montreal and Tampa Bay meeting in their 79th game and Buffalo already at 80.
- Montreal climbed into the race with an eight-game win streak, and Nick Suzuki drives the attack with a career-high 96 points.
- Tampa Bay has lost three of its last five, including defeats to Buffalo and Ottawa, while Nikita Kucherov continues to score and Andrei Vasilevskiy anchors the crease.
- The Lightning lead the season series 2-1, though the Canadiens won the latest matchup 4-1 in Tampa on March 31.
- The division winner will face a wild-card team, and the next two seeds are likely to meet in Round 1 as Boston trails the top three by six points.