Canadiens Lineup

Jonathan Drouin – Nick Suzuki – Joel Armia

Cole Caufield – Kirby Dach – Mike Hoffman

Juraj Slafkovsky – Christian Dvorak – Josh Anderson

Michael Pezzetta – Jake Evans – Anthony Richard

Joel Edmundson – Kaiden Guhle

Jordan Harris – Johnathan Kovacevic

Arber Xhekaj – Chris Wideman

Jake Allen – Sam Montembeault

Evgenii Dadonov

Carey Price (knee), Paul Byron (hip), Brendan Gallagher (lower-body), David Savard (upper-body), Sean Monahan (lower-body), Mike Matheson (lower-body)

Game Report

The final score was kind to the Montreal Canadiens because for long stretches throughout the game, they were completely dominated in Dallas. In the first period, shots attempts were 17-to-6 for the Stars, but the Habs escaped with a 1-0 lead on Jake Evans’ first goal of the season. High danger scoring chances were 6-1 for Dallas.

The Canadiens fourth line struck again early in the second period as Michael Pezzetta scored his second goal of the season.

Meanwhile the top nine was just a confused jumble of ineffectiveness. Nick Suzuki was saddled with two players who, in 41 games combined this season, have precisely zero goals. As a result, Suzuki with Jonathan Drouin and Joel Armia were crushed by their Dallas counterparts — shots attempts were 8-23 at 5-on-5 for 60 minutes. 

Kirby Dach with Cole Caufield and Mike Hoffman fared better, particularly Dach, but were unable to make a dent in the Dallas defence.

The architect of this fine mess was Marty St. Louis. The head coach may have succeeded in injecting some emotion into the play of his fourth line but in the process destroyed any cohesion among the rest of his lineup.

And then there was the parade to the penalty box. Bad penalties by Drouin, Hoffman, Chris Wideman and Pezzetta in the final 26 minutes sunk the Habs. The vaunted Stars power-play scored three times to claim victory.

At the final buzzer, Dach was assessed a 10-minute misconduct for abuse of officials.

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