Slapshots

Net gains

Canadiens goalie Jose Theodore has given up seven goals in two games and was pulled before the end of Game 1, but it's hard to blame Theodore for his team being down 2-0 in the best-of-seven series. Theodore made several dazzling saves in Game 2, including on breakaways by Ruslan Fedotenko and Dmitry Afanasankov.

"He did a great job," Montreal coach Claude Julien said. "He was able to keep us in the game with some timely saves and that enabled us to get back in the game. That's what you need from goaltenders in the playoffs and he has provided us with that."

Theodore said he has to be better, but also pointed a finger at his teammates.

"I can't control the chances the other team gets," Theodore said. "My job is like all goalies and that is to stop them. ... But we can't keep giving up breakaways."

Lightning defenseman Cory Sarich is best known in this series for getting punched to the ice by Montreal defenseman Sheldon Souray at the end of Game 1. Other than that and his assist for simply chipping the puck off the boards on Vinny Lecavalier's breakaway goal in Game 2, Sarich hasn't been noticed.

That's a compliment.

"You guys don't talk enough about Cory," Lightning coach John Tortorella told the media. "When I came in here as an assistant coach (in 2000) and (compare him) to what he is right now, he is probably our most improved player.

"He plays a tough position for a young man and that's defense. He has been very steady. I guess it's good you don't talk about him because you don't notice him. Usually if you notice a defenseman (it's) when he makes a mistake and the puck is in the net. But he has been very steady."

If anyone knows how difficult it is to cover, let alone stop, Lightning wing Martin St. Louis, it is Lecavalier's older brother, Phil, who played against St. Louis in peewees in Montreal and in college.

"He's always been really good," Phil said. "It's not just the last few years. At the peewee level, he was so fast and so talented."

Also on St. Louis' team then was Lightning center Eric Perrin. They grew up best buddies in Laval, a Montreal suburb. Phil, who will be 29 next month, five years older than Vinny, grew up in the suburb of Ile Bizard.

"Our whole game plan was to make sure we hit them and played real physical against them," said Phil, a defenseman.

Phil said the strategy was the same when he played for Clarkson University in upstate New York as St. Louis and Perrin set scoring records at Vermont.

"It was tough," Phil said, laughing. "I wasn't the fastest guy on skates."

Lightning defenseman Dan Boyle on Monday politely declined to talk about the upper-body injury that forced him out of Game 2 against the Canadiens in the second period.

"Can't say," Boyle said when asked if he could talk about it.

Not even how it happened?

"I don't have anything for you, sorry," he said.

Think you'll play?

"I don't know."

Boyle is day to day. With defenseman Jassen Cullimore also out with a right wrist injury, Tampa Bay will go with either Darren Rumble or Stan Neckar if Boyle cannot play in Game 3 tonight at the Bell Centre.

And it certainly looked bad when Canadiens defenseman Andrei Markov was motionless on the ice after he was elbowed in the back of the head by Lightning wing Andre Roy. But considering Markov played his next shift, speculation was he embellished to make sure Roy was penalized.

"I think he acted a little bit," Roy said. "But that's part of trying to get those penalties."

Roy received two minutes for elbowing, even though he said he only brushed Markov.

"I went to hit him and he kind of moved," Roy said. "I barely touched him. I whiffed. They're just trying to make (officials) call penalties and make me get penalties."

Tortorella would not bite when asked if he believed the mystique of the Canadiens had lessened. In fact, he said it is irrelevant.

"We respect the Montreal organization but we're concerned with this team we're playing right now," Tortorella said. "That's all we can handle on our plate are the Montreal Canadiens of 2004. That's all we're concerned about, and I say that with the utmost respect to the organization. Nothing else before, nothing else after. It's what's going on right now."

The Lightning looks completely different from the team that soft-stepped through two losses in the first two games of last season's East semifinals against the Devils.

Tortorella said that is the value of experience.

"I think we've learned a little bit about intensity," he said. "We're understanding playing at home which sometimes is more difficult in the playoffs. There's no secret formula. It's having to go through it and gain some experience and learn.

"You learn by winning and sometimes you have to learn by losing. You try to go about your business and fall back on things as you gain that experience."

"You get too far ahead of yourself in playoff hockey against a club like that, it's going to come back and bite you. That's where some of our experience, good and bad, comes into effect." - Tortorella on the Canadiens.

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