TAMPA, Fla. — The Lightning scored a 5-4 overtime win against the Montreal Canadiens in the team's first game following an extended holiday break.
Ondrej Palat scored 36 seconds into overtime after Tampa Bay teammate Corey Perry tied it late in the third period. Perry got the equalizer with 19.7 seconds left in regulation and the Lightning net empty before Palat won it off a pass from Victor Hedman.
It was the first NHL game since the Lightning won 4-3 at Vegas on Dec. 21 in the only game played that night.
At the time, the Bolts, along with every other team in the NHL, were forced into a week-long hiatus when the league announced it would be shutting down its operations for a period of time, following a wave of positive COVID tests among players and coaches.
Among the initial long list was Lightning head coach Jon Cooper. Days later the team also announced Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Mikhail Sergachev, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brian Elliott and assistant coach Rob Zettler had entered COVID protocol.
The news left Tuesday's game up in the air, but despite the league postponing other matchups, the show went on.
The NHL previously announced it would withdraw from the Winter Olympics due to the disruption of its regular-season schedule.
With 50 games already postponed, there was a fear the NHL would be unable to complete a full 82-game season while also taking a break of more than two weeks in February for the Olympics. The NHL’s bottom line is at stake with the league and players drawing no direct money from competing at the Winter Games.
While the NHL and NHLPA agreed on Olympic participation last year as part of a collective bargaining agreement extension, the deal to go to Beijing was contingent on pandemic conditions not worsening. A material interruption of the schedule allowed the league to pull out, and the delta and omicron variants spreading across North America not only caused games to be pushed off but made some players hesitant about going to China.
As a result, the men’s hockey tournament at the Olympics will go on without NHL players for the second consecutive time.
