On their annual year-end trek to Florida, the Montreal Canadiens will wrap up play in 2023 with a New Year's Eve match against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Coach Martin St. Louis and the Canadiens are pleased to have Juraj Slafkovsky on the trip with them.
The No. 1 overall pick in 2022, Slafkovsky was leveled on Thursday when Hurricanes forward Stefan Noesen hammered him with a high hit in Montreal's 5-3 loss at Carolina.
Officials stopped play with the 19-year-old Slovakian player down and distressed, but as Slafkovsky soon headed to the dressing room. No penalty or review came into play.
The latter appears to be what coaches and players desire when it comes to high shots: taking a look at a replay.
"I think it'd be great for them to have the discussion of just reviewing," Montreal defenseman Mike Matheson said. "Not necessarily saying every hit that has head contact needs to be a penalty, but just be able to review it so they could have the same luxury as everybody else."
Added Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher, "Safety of the players comes first, but you don't want to lose what makes hockey special, and physicality's a part of that."
In the first of their back-to-back Sunshine State games, the Canadiens lost to the Florida Panthers 4-1 on Saturday in a game that unraveled for the visitors in the final period.
Montreal's Cole Caufield scored a power-play goal in the second period to tie the game 1-1, but the Panthers got a trio of third-period markers to pull away.
Eetu Luostarinen's second man-advantage tally was the game-winner, and the Panthers added even-strength and empty-net goals for their fourth straight victory.
"I thought we were working, but (Florida) is a hard team," said St. Louis, whose team fell to 1-2-1 in the past four games. "It's hard to play 60 minutes of good hockey when you're playing good teams. They're going to make you struggle at times ... but you've got to be careful of your actions all over the ice to not give a ref the opportunity to call a penalty."
Up in Tampa as Montreal was losing, the Lightning were falling 5-1 to the New York Rangers. Artemi Panarin (hat trick) and Vincent Trocheck (goal, three assists) had outstanding nights for the visitors.
While taking a second straight defeat, Tampa Bay did not go down without at least having a shot at beating the NHL's top club. The Lightning attempted a staggering 78 shots -- 23 of them were blocked.
"I thought we had some good chances and some good O-zone time," Lightning center Nicholas Paul said. "We just couldn't get them in the back of the net. ... We did some good things out there but made some mistakes that cost us. When you play a team like that, you've got to limit those mistakes."
Paul hesitated at admitting that his club was irritated after losing consecutive home games to Florida and New York after entering the week with a 10-3-3 home mark.
"I don't know if you'd call it frustration," he said. "The group in here, we're trying to get away from frustration and focus on positives. When you let frustration come to your game, that's when bad things happen and it trickles down."
Added Paul of the Canadiens, "We've just got to win (Sunday). Everybody in here knows it."
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