Canadiens Lineup

Tyler Toffoli – Nick Suzuki – Cole Caufield

Artturi Lehkonen – Phillip Danault – Brendan Gallagher

Paul Byron – Jesperi Kotkaniemi – Josh Anderson

Joel Armia – Eric Staal – Corey Perry

Ben Chiarot – Shea Weber

Brett Kulak – Joel Edmundson

Alexander Romanov – Erik Gustafsson

Carey Price – Jake Allen

Tomas Tatar, Michael Frolik, Charlie Lindgren

Alex Belzile, Laurent Dauphin, Lukas Vejdemo, Jesse Ylonen, Cale Fleury, Otto Leskinen, Xavier Ouellet, Cayden Primeau, Michael McNiven

Jonathan Drouin (undisclosed), Jon Merrill (undisclosed), Jake Evans (concussion), Jeff Petry (hand)

Game Report

This game was all about the defence. And that shouldn’t be a surprise. The Vegas Golden Knights, who finished at the top of the league standings this regular season, were also the best defensive team in the NHL. To their credit, the Canadiens had a great start to the game, using their speed and strong forecheck to put the Golden Knights on their heels.

Montreal played with pace, getting shots to the net in the first five minutes. Marc-Andre Fleury was generating a never-ending stream of rebounds but the Golden Knights defence kept the Habs from getting to the blue paint. Vegas’ defence then went to work contributing to the offence by controlling the neutral zone and helping to get pucks behind the Canadiens ‘D’.

Vegas defenceman Shea Theodore scored the game’s opening goal at the 9:15 mark of the first period following a weak neutral zone play by Erik Gustafsson. Three of the Golden Knights’ goals came from defencemen while at the same time they were defending well.

From the middle of the first period through the final buzzer, the Golden Knights controlled the this game. The Canadiens did not record a high danger scoring chance on Fleury in the final 40 minutes of the game.

Price Keeps it Close

Once again, Carey Price was outstanding making miraculous saves on Mark Stone, Jonathan Marchessault, Shea Theodore and others. Vegas dominated the Canadiens in the second period but still had a chance in the third solely because of the spectacular play of Price.

With respect to the Canadiens defence, it was a very difficult night for Brett Kulak and Erik Gustafsson. That spelled trouble for Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot and Joel Edmundson. Chiarot played too many minutes finishing the night at minus-3. Weber looked to further injure his ailing hand taking a stick from Ryan Reaves. Montreal is already missing Jeff Petry who, when he returns, won’t be 100 percent.

The Golden Knights are the heaviest team in the league. They punished the Canadiens all game long. The third line of Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Josh Anderson and Paul Byron could not get on track with Kotkaniemi spending most of the third frame on the bench.

Cole Caufield scored his first goal of the playoffs on the power-play with his family in attendance at T-Mobile Arena.

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