Canadiens vs Bruins Recap: Habs Take Shootout Thriller, Division Lead

Wednesday March 27th, 2013

Game Recap: Canadiens abandon defense but mount thrilling comeback for shootout win.

BOSTON BRUINS 21-7-4 46 POINTS 4th in the East	MONTREAL CANADIENS 21-7-5 47 POINTS 2nd in the East
5	6

Top Scorers:

BRUINS		CANADIENS
	Patrice Bergeron 1G 3A Tyler Seguin 1G 2A 6SOG Brad Marchand 1A		Michael Ryder 2G 6SOG Brendan Gallagher 1G GWG in shootout Tomas Plekanec 3A

Scoring Summary:

Shots on Goal:

Goaltending:

BRUINS		CANADIENS
Tuukka Rask LOSS	Record: 15-4-4 SA: 28 Sv%: .821	Peter Budaj WIN	Record: 5-1-1 SA : 15 Sv%: .933

Lineup Notes:

• Habs starting six: Tomas Plekanec, Michael Ryder, Brian Gionta, Andrei Markov, Alexei Emelin, Carey Price
• Scratched: Tomas Kaberle, Gabriel Dumont, Yannick Weber
• Mike Blunden took Dumont’s place on the fourth line.
• Bruins defenseman Matt Bartkowski was held out of the game as a piece of a trade offer to Calgary for Jarome Iginla. Torey Krug, who was recalled from Providence of the AHL earlier in the day, was in the lineup.

What you need to know:

• It was intense, playoff-like hockey for the second consecutive night. Bruins rallied from a 2-0 deficit;  Habs had to comeback after twice being down by two goals.
• Canadiens defensive zone play was atrocious: turnovers, botched coverage. They looked pitiful in their own end particularly while giving up four goals during a second-period meltdown.
• A tough game for the defensive pair of Andrei Markov and Alexei Emelin, both had a rating of minus-3. Markov somewhat redeemed himself by scoring the tying goal with 8.2 seconds left in the third period.
• Habs power-play was awful on the night for five of their six opportunities. David Desharnais still has not registered a power-play point on the road. The second-pairing duo of Josh Gorges and Francis Bouillon is not working. Better to split Andrei Markov and P.K. Subban to quarterback each wave of the power-play.
• While the Bruins spend a good deal of time complaining about diving, Shawn Thornton seemed quite proud of his embellishment that resulted in Lars Eller being sent off for two minutes. Eller was an irritant for the Bruins all game.
• A solid night for Tomas Plekanec with three assists. Good chemistry developing with Michael Ryder who scored twice and had chances for the hat trick.
• Carey Price made multiple brilliant stops including an enormous glove save on a Brad Marchand shot. He couldn’t be faulted on any of the Bruins goals. Peter Budaj played well in his 25 minutes giving up one goal and was perfect in the shootout.
• Limited ice-time for the third line but they played well particularly defensively. Eller’s trio was the only one that didn’t give up an even-strength goal.  Alex Galchenyuk had an assist on Subban’s goal from the point. Colby Armstrong and Lars Eller provided the screen.
• Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask was less than pleased with the Bruins loss. See his reaction here.

Injury/Roster Report:

• No new Habs injuries.
• A day off on Thursday for the Canadiens. Next practice will be Friday morning at 11 a.m. at the Complexe Sportif Bell in Brossard.

NHL 3 Stars:
	Michael Ryder  Patrice Bergeron  Tyler Seguin

Coach Michel Therrien:

• On the goalie switch: “I just wanted to change the momentum of the game. It’s not that I wasn’t pleased with Carey. We left him all alone. You don’t want to see that for your No. 1 goalie. I didn’t want to leave him in there.”
• “We need to play better defensively. That’s not our game. It’s a character win. We never gave up.”
• “Gallagher scored a big goal. He had good net presence. He has no fear. It’s going to give him a lot of confidence.”
• “It’s not always easy to play in a place like this. They put a lot of pressure. We were trying to protect [Tinordi] a little bit.”

Michael Ryder:

• “It feels good, but I’m just happy that we got the win. We came out, started off the game hard, got the lead, and then in the second, Boston turned it around on us and got the momentum back. In the third, we knew we had to change it up a bit, and start getting back to our game, getting pucks deep and skating. That’s when we’re at our best.”

Brendan Gallagher:

• “It wasn’t an adjustment in our style, it was just an adjustment in our mindset and the way we were playing where we were much more aggressive. We were getting the loose pucks and finding ways to create chances and I thought that was big for us and when you get down two goals twice and come back two goals, you have a lot of character in this group. It’s great to see it and it’s a lot of fun.”

Bruins forward Tyler Seguin:

• “Yeah, it sucks. It’s a tough one to swallow. I thought that we earned the most portion of that game and deserved to walk away with two points. I got to swallow this one and move on.”

Bruins forward Brad Marchand:

• “You take a look at it, a lot of embellishment going on and some of those high sticks and even that elbow on ‘Z’ (Chara.) That’s tough and that’s how it is and we gotta play through that. [Subban] grabbed my stick and threw his head back but it’s tough for a ref to see. I don’t know if the ref in-close to me saw it and didn’t call it. It’s tough not to call when there’s a stick up near the guy’s face and head snaps back but there’s not a whole lot that I can do there.”

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