Tampa, Florida - The Tampa Bay Lightning are now halfway to a second-straight Stanley Cup championship with a big home win over the Montreal Canadiens in Game 2 of the Finals.

The Lightning's 3-1 victory on Wednesday night gave them a 2-0 series lead over the Canadiens. The Finals now head north of the border to Montreal for Games 3 and 4.

Andrei Vasilevskiy (26) kept delivering for the Lightning as they took everything that the Canadiens threw at them. Vasilevskiy stopped 42 shots, the most he’s ever saved during his career in the playoffs, and was the key to Tampa’s second win in these Finals.

"Thankfully, there was one guy that had his level where it needed to be," Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh said about Vasilevskiy in his postgame comments to ESPN.

NHL NHL: Players held back from Beijing Games amid league-wide Covid outbreak

Montreal, on the other hand, tweaked their game plan slightly for this matchup, after taking a real beating in Game 1. The Canadiens are known for their punishing hits, but they also attempted to get after Vasilevskiy much more than they did in the opener. That approach was good for racking up shots on goal on the stats sheets, but only one of them was good enough to get past Tampa’s netminder.

Overall, the game was a close battle in which neither team could take full control. Anthony Cirelli broke the scoreless tie in the second period for Tampa, but then Nick Suzuki answered back minutes later for the Habs. In the closing seconds of that period, Blake Coleman took a head-first dive towards a puck rolling towards Montreal goalie Carey Price to give the Lightning the lead back.

The Canadiens managed to keep up the offensive pressure in the third period, but Ondrej Palat scored an insurance goal for the Bolts to seal game two for Tampa.

The Canadiens are playing a Stanley Cup game at home for the first time since winning it all in 1993. Aside from that motivation, they’ve also been in tougher deficits than this during these playoffs, such as trailing the Leafs 3-1 in the first round back in May. They rallied spectacularly to knock out Toronto in seven games and kick off their surprising run to the Finals, so there’s no reason to count them out completely just yet.

The Stanley Cup Finals resume in Montreal on Friday night.