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TAMPA, Florida (Ticker) -- The
Montreal Canadiens
could have used All-Star defenseman
Sheldon Souray
in the third period against the
Tampa Bay Lightning
.
Brad Richards
scored twice and Martin St. Louis and
Vincent Lecavalier
each added a goal in the third period as the Lightning rallied for their eighth win in 10 games, 5-3 over the Canadiens.
Enjoying a career season, Souray suffered a left knee injury in Tuesday's loss at Florida and could be sidelined up to six weeks.
"I won't speculate on that. He will be seen by our team doctors in Montreal on Monday and Tuesday before we know how long," Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. "Every team has to deal with those situations and injuries. Everyone now has to pick up the slack."
Without their star defenseman, the Canadiens were outshot in the final period, 23-4.
"You can't predict you're going to get 23 or 24 shots and 15 scoring chances in the third period," Lightning coach John Tortorella said. "But we felt we had an opportunity and tried to stay with it."
Richards tied it, 3-3, on a slap shot with 7:23 remaining and Lecavalier got the go-ahead goal just over two minutes later after redirecting defenseman
Darryl Sydor
's slapper under the left arm of goaltender
Jose Theodore
.
"We got the key goals at the right time," Richards said. "We just took over the third. It was unbelievable. It's weird. When you stick to it, things always seem to end up working."
Richards added an empty-net goal with 15.4 seconds left for the Lightning, who are 8-1-1 in their last 10 contests and have just three regulation losses in the last 20.
"We lost our composure," Julien said. "We started taking some bad penalties and they kept coming at us and kept coming. We left Theodore on his own. We didn't give him a lot of help and it cost us. Our team started panicking."
Montreal jumped out to a 2-0 lead on first-period goals by
Saku Koivu
and defenseman
Andrei Markov
before St. Louis halved the deficit 6:22 into the second on a bad-angle shot that caromed off Theodore's left pad into the net.
"When we have the lead, we're not confident going for another goal," Koivu said. "It seems that we're defending too much and the other team gets the momentum."
St. Louis forged a 2-2 tie 4:44 into the final period when he fired a shot off Koivu's left skate, but Montreal briefly regained the lead on a slap shot by
Jan Bulis
that eluded
John Grahame
before bouncing off both posts into the goal.
"Give our boys high marks," Tortorella said. "We kept coming and coming. We weren't ready to play at the start and we got away with it and won the game. Tonight, for the first few minutes, we just weren't in it. We finally found a way."
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