Alex Tanguay said last week he was a bit unhappy with his use by coach Guy Carbonneau. He felt he deserved more icetime, especially late in the game. Without saying it, he was implying that he felt more deserving of being on the ice than guys like Maxim Lapierre or Steve Begin. The coach answer was on the safe side: “In some games maybe we’ll lose by a goal and we’ll have players like Max or Steve on the bench while more offensive players will see more ice.” What he probably meant was: “When Alex will give the same effort to preserve the lead as those players, maybe I’ll give him some ice time late in the game”.
And tonight Lapierre made his coach look like a genius. Or at least he looked like he was right. Maxim Lapierre finished the game with a hat trick, giving a second effort, stealing the puck to McCabe at the Panthers blue line to score in an empty net. This third goal of the game gave Max 7 goals this season, only three short of Tanguay even though he doesn’t get the same ice time, doesn’t play on the powerplay or play along players as talented. Hell, Lapierre doesn’t even have half the talent Tanguay has. But there is something he has more, way more, than the talented winger: heart. Lapierre is like Kostopoulos or Begin; they will give everything they have on the ice. Of course, they will make mistakes and it will lead to some goals against, but you can’t blame them for not giving you enough. Tanguay… well… thank God he has talent.
Carey Price is another singular player. I’ve seen him make many mistakes. It is not rare to see him give up a bad goal, like the first one of the night as he let through a weak angle shot that even André “Red Light” Racicot should have stopped. But the greatest strength of the young goaltender is coming back stronger after such a goal, a trait all of the greatest goaltenders have in common. Patrick Roy had that “You got a freebie, you ain’t getting another one in” look. While Carey’s face doesn’t say this, or doesn’t say much at all, you can see he has the same desire to redeem himself.
Alex Kovalev evened the score when he tried to feed Tanguay in front of the net but the puck deflected on a skate. And early in second period, Thomas Plekanec showed us that he is back. After playing pretty well killing a penalty, something he did well all season, he raced to the other side of the ice to get a puck and with little room made a move on Craig Anderson. Two weeks ago Pleky would have probably shot from a weird angle and miss the net. But for the past couple of games he seemed to have his confidence and patience back and it shows.
Them Sergei Kostitsyn made a mistake, a big one. He took the puck in his own zone and tried to deke his own centerman Ben Maxwell but gave it back to David booth right in the slot. Then, another mind boggling thing happened: Radek Dvorak tried too hard to fight for the puck with Carey Price and Plekanec LOST it. He threw him on the ice and started to hit him on the head repeatedly. I heard Kirk Muller say recently that we didn’t understand how much Thomas had his team and his teammates at heart but that was off the wall.
And then, the Lapierre show started. He scored his first goal by getting the puck behind the net, trying for a wraparound and when that failed, he simply went back the other way and put the puck top shelf while Craig Anderson looked like he had no clue what was going on. Then early in third period Guillaume Latendresse, who had a good if unspectacular game, got first to a puck in the Florida zone and instead of going the obvious “put the puck on the net” play back passed it to Lapierre and went to the net, forcing the defensemen to follow him. Lapierre shot went right through and Anderson was pulled. From that moment, the Habs never looked behind and Lapierre finished the game with his empty net goal for the second hat trick in two games for Montreal players. Oh and let me give you another reason why Lapierre is becoming one of the most important players on that team: you remember how people complained about his faceoff skills? He is now 11th in the league amongst real center players (who take a minimum of X faceoffs… whatever the minimum is). A little over 56%.
And for once, I was happy to see the effort put forth by the team against a low level team like the Panthers. There were some mistakes, the most obvious ones by Sergei and Breezer but they kept the game simple and most importantly didn’t stop playing in third period even with a two goal lead.
Now let see if they can repeat against Tampa Bay tomorrow.
