Brendan Gallagher gave Canadiens new life in Game 5 victory
The Montreal Canadiens came up with a huge win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 5 of their first-round series on Wednesday night to take a 3-2 lead and push the Lightning to the brink.
Montreal head coach Martin St. Louis made a big switch following the loss in Game 4, inserting veteran winger Brendan Gallagher into the lineup for his debut in the series.
Gallagher made his coach look like a genius, scoring the opening goal early in the first period and bringing his trademark grit, sandpaper and aggression against a Lightning team that has those elements in spades.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed the impact St. Louis’ decision to insert Gallagher into the lineup had on the team’s energy level and the outcome of the game.
Tyler Yaremchuk: A massive victory for Montreal, who insert Brendan Gallagher back into the line-up after he was health scratched for the first four games of the series, and Gallagher wasted no time getting on the board. Three minutes into that hockey game, he finds the back of the net, and the Montreal Canadiens, a second road win in this series. They’re heading home to the Bell Centre with a chance to eliminate and upset the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Carter Hutton: In the six minutes that he played, they showed a clip on the broadcast, he didn’t really leave the front of the net. When the puck was in the offensive zone, he was just battling, creating chaos, and he gets rewarded for it. And this is a guy that everybody knows is a Montreal Canadien. Everyone knows how much he bleeds and the amount of stuff that he’s been through. He plays the game on the edge, and he keeps his team in the game to be able to come back and win this one. There’s the first goal there. Unbelievable effort on that one, and this is another tricky one for me. I know we’re talking about it like with Brendan Gallagher drawing into the line-up. These are the adjustments that I think you need as a team to match a Tampa Bay team that has that veteran leadership. So this is a really good play, I think, by Martin St. Louis and his coaching staff, Trevor Letowski, to bring him in and seeing the impact that he can make in the game. And yes, it’s only six minutes, and yes, we might not see him again, but this is a situation where he did a really good job of kind of turning this game on its ear.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…