Not playing each other all season until now doesn’t seem to have bothered the Vegas Golden Knights and Montreal Canadiens or the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Islanders. It didn’t take long for tensions to rise in each NHL semifinal series. Scrums after whistles and the game’s final horn have shown just how quickly two groups of players can grow to dislike each other. The Golden Knights and Canadiens have gotten on each other’s nerves despite a lack of penalty calls. And the Lightning and Islanders picked up their rivalry right where it left off in the 2020 bubble playoffs.
