The last meeting between these two teams during the 2025-26 National Hockey League regular season was a nasty one and it now seems that both teams intend to continue that trend in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Montreal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning clashed in Game 1 of their opening round series on Sunday night and it was a physical affair with plenty of hitting and several players getting banged up during the course of this one.

What will likely go down as the most spectacular hit of the game however came courtesy of two players, Montreal Canadiens forwards Jake Evans and Josh Anderson, when they completely destroyed Lightning defenseman Charle-Edouard D'Astous behind the Lightning net.

D'Astous was attempting to fetch the puck behind Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy when both Evans and Anderson came flying in from opposite directions but with one single thought in mind, knocking D'Astous off the puck with a big hit. They both did exactly that, colliding with D'Astous from opposite sides and sandwiching him between them in brutal fashion.

D'Astous would remain flat on his back for several moments with his arm locked in the air, appearing completely knocked out, before he began to move again. Even then it was a long time before he would recover enough to get back to his feet with D'Astous eventually helped off the ice. D'Astous has not returned and I do not expect that we will see him again tonight.

Date	OPP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	SOG	HIT	TOI
Apr 19	MTL	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	09:35
TOTAL		0	0	0	0	0	0	1	9:35

Charle-Edouard D'Astous

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