All Habs Headlines: Price, Scherbak, Malhotra, MacDonald, Leblanc

• Canadiens lost their first game of the pre-season on Sunday evening by the score of 2-0 to the Washington Capitals. The Habs have a record of 3-1-0 thus far.
• David Desharnais was given the night off giving Alex Galchenyuk an opportunity to centre a line of Max Pacioretty and P.A. Parenteau.
• The Canadiens dressed a NHL-player heavy lineup along with three prospects: Jiri Sekac, Jarred Tinordi and Christian Thomas.
• The game remained scoreless after two periods, with Washington outshooting Montreal 18-15.
• Carey Price looked in mid-season form and was the best player on the ice by a wide margin.
• Alexei Emelin played a physical game leading the team with seven hits.
• Jarred Tinordi delivered a clean hit on Capitals forward Nate Schmidt in the third period. Tinordi received 5 minutes for elbowing, 5 minutes for fighting and a game misconduct.

• With 1:29 to play, Joel Ward took advantage of a P.K. Subban turnover putting one past Carey Price, giving the Capitals a 1-0 lead. Brooks Laich added an empty-netter with 39 seconds left.
• The NHL three stars of the game were: 1. Carey Price  2. John Carlson  3. Alex Galchenyuk  
• Canadiens lines and defense pairings during Saturday’s practice:

Max Pacioretty – Alex Galchenyuk – P.A. Parenteau
Michael Bournival – Tomas Plekanec – Brendan Gallagher
Jiri Sekac – Lars Eller – Christian Thomas
Travis Moen – Manny Malhotra – Dale Weise

Alexei Emelin – P.K. Subban
Andrei Markov – Tom Gilbert
Jarred Tinordi – Mike Weaver

Carey Price
Peter Budaj (backup)

► Regular season drawing near

• Veteran Manny Malhotra discussed the ever-nearing regular season, “I think games automatically do step up. There’s that feeling of urgency as those games start winding down and game one of the regular season starts creeping closer. Guys get a little bit sharper. The intensity is upped out there. The physicality is upped out there. I don’t think anything needs to be said or spoken. It’s just something that happens.”
• Carey Price played the full game on Sunday night and will be given two more games before the beginning of the season.

► Training camp down to 35 players

• On Sunday, Marc Bergevin announced that eight players were released from the training camp; 17 were assigned to Hamilton; and Nikita Sherbak was sent to his junior team, the Everett Silvertips (of the Western Hockey League).
• Thirty-five players now remain- 20 forwards, 11 defensemen, and four goaltenders.
• You can check out the full story here.

► Sportsnet fail

• John Shannon is the former executive vice-president of programming for the NHL and prior to that the former executive producer of Hockey Night in Canada.  One would think that Shannon should know a little about hockey and should know a lot about journalism. On Sunday night he put both in question tweeting about the Canadiens rookie Nikita Scherbak who had just completed a superb training camp.

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Canadiens announce Nikita Scherbak is being returned to the WHL…this season,Everett. Quietly they were disappointed with the Rd 1st Pick.

— John Shannon (@JSportsnet) September 28, 2014

• Five hours later Shannon received word from the Canadiens saying they disagreed with his statement.

► Leblanc cut

• On Monday, the Anaheim Ducks announced that they had placed former Canadiens forward Louis Leblanc on waivers. If Louis Leblanc fails to play 15 games for Anaheim in 2014-15, the Habs will not receive the Ducks 5th round pick in 2015.

► Season of edits

• Seems that some Twitter users have had time on their hands while awaiting the arrival of the NHL regular season.

https://twitter.com/hockeyNEET/status/516363554585583616

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