Brandon Hagel Leads Way As Tampa Bay Lightning Head To Montreal Even In Series

“I never really would have expected that,” he said. “It’s good. Obviously, whatever it takes to win. Sometimes it’s going to take a fight and sometimes it is going to take scoring goals.”

The fact Slafkovsky had only one shot on goal after the fight may or may not have been a byproduct of the emotion Hagel brought to the rink, something that was evident from the get-go.

“I think everyone in the room knows we’re good when we play with emotion,” said Hagel, whose team will play the third and fourth games of the series at the Bell Centre, where as a member of Team Canada he energized the crowd in going at it with Team USA’s Matthew Tkachuk off the opening faceoff during last year’s 4 Nations tourney. “Not just myself, but guys are willing to try to bring everyone into the (battle), and that is kind of what I was trying to do. Obviously, it worked. It is going to be like this the entire series. I am excited to get to Montreal.”

The Lightning are feeling much better about going to Montreal tied in the series instead of facing a size-two hole.

“Going up there and being down 0-2, your margin of error keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller,” said coach Jon Cooper, who earlier this season delivered much praise to No. 38. “At least we kept our margin of error the same. If not, we’ve given ourselves a little bit better of a chance.”

As Cooper noted, Martin St. Louis’ team is feeling pretty good about how it played in getting a road split while the Bolts feel it is “a damn good thing we won this last game.”

“Everybody can factor in whatever narrative they want to make about going up (to Montreal) 1-1, but let’s be honest, an 0-2 hole would not have been fun,” said Cooper.

That is not a concern as his team looks forward to Game 3 in Montreal on Friday.

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” said Corey Perry. “They had 106 points. We had 106 points and the two teams match up well against each other. That is what the playoffs are all about.”

This article was originally published on Forbes.com