Lightning Slept at Hotel Before Home Game 7 vs. Canadiens

The Tampa Bay Lightning aren’t taking any chances with their home-ice juju.

Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic reported Sunday morning that the Lightning slept at a nearby hotel Saturday night, with the team apparently trying to manufacture some road mentality before Game 7 against the Canadiens.

The math behind the move adds up once you look at the Lightning’s recent home playoff record. Tampa Bay is 2-11 in its last 13 home postseason games dating back to the 2022 Stanley Cup Final. Both of the Bolts’ wins against Montreal in this first-round series came at Bell Centre.

Hotel sleepovers before home games are common in the NFL, where teams play once a week and want to lock in focus. They’re rarer in hockey. After dropping Game 5 at Benchmark International Arena and watching their season hang by a thread, Jon Cooper’s group decided to try something different.

Tampa Bay forced this winner-take-all matchup with a 1-0 overtime victory on Friday in Montreal. Gage Goncalves slammed home a rebound for his first career playoff goal, and Andrei Vasilevskiy turned aside 30 shots for his eighth career postseason shutout.

Even getting back to Florida turned into an ordeal. Severe weather diverted the Lightning’s charter to Sarasota on Saturday, while the Canadiens ended up rerouted to Fort Lauderdale before finally landing in Tampa around 7:10 p.m.

History gives the Lightning some cover heading into Sunday’s elimination game. The franchise is 4-2 all-time in Game 7s, with a 2-1 record at home. Whether a night in a hotel ballroom can flip the script on three years of home playoff struggles is another story.

Puck drops at 6 p.m. ET on TNT and TruTV. The winner moves on to face the Sabres in an Eastern Conference Semifinal beginning Wednesday in Buffalo.