Two injury-riddled teams met in their first games back after the holiday break, but the Tampa Bay Lightning appeared to be the more prepared team as they hosted the Montreal Canadiens.
The Habs continue to soldier on without Alex Galchenyuk, David Desharnais, Andrew Shaw, and Andrei Markov while enjoying the return of Alexei Emelin, who missed the previous two games for the birth of his third child.
The Lightning, for their part, welcomed back Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat to their lineup, while going without the services of Valtteri Filppula, who was held out of Wednesday night’s tilt for missing a team meeting earlier in the day.