NEW YORK, 25 April 2004 — Nikolai Khabibulin made 21 saves and Vincent Lecavalier had two goals and an assist to lead the Tampa Bay Lightning to a 4-0 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Friday in the opening game of their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
Tampa Bay dominated most of the game, out-shooting the Canadiens 34-21, including 24-15 over the last two periods, when they scored all four of their goals.
Khabibulin had a relatively easy night in goal for the Lightning, posting his league-leading fourth shutout of the playoffs.
After six playoff games, Khabibulin’s goals against average is 0.66 and his save percentage is .975.
Lecavalier, a Quebec native, was held without a point in Tampa Bay’s five-game series win over the New York Islanders in the opening round. But he had a big night offensively against the Canadiens, adding an assist to his two goals.
After a scoreless first period, Ruslan Fedotenko opened the scoring at 2:52 of the second period and Lecavalier added his first of the game 14 minutes later to make it 2-0 after 40 minutes.
Lecavalier scored again before the third period was four minutes old and Dmitry Afanasenkov completed the scoring with his goal at 7:20 of the final period.
NHL regular season scoring leader Martin St. Louis added three assists to the Tampa Bay attack.
Montreal goaltender Jose Theodore was pulled after the fourth goal in favor of Mathieu Garon, who stopped all six shots he faced.
Theodore was brilliant in the final three games of the first round, leading the Canadiens to a seven-game series win over Boston after trailing t3-1, the first time in franchise history they rebounded from such a deficit.
