GameDay: Habs vs Penguins Preview, Lineups, Pacioretty, Norris, Rookies

All Habs GameDay: Wednesday April 17, 2013

On this day in hockey history… In 1997 – Martin Brodeur became just the second goaltender to score a goal in the Stanley Cup playoffs when his empty-netter sealed a 5-2 win over the visiting Montreal Canadiens.

PROJECTED LINE COMBINATIONS AND GOALTENDERS
(Will be updated following game day skate.)

TOP SCORERS

► Battle of the two top teams in the Eastern Conference: 

• For the third and final team of the season, the Montreal Canadiens and Pittsburgh Penguins will face-off, both currently top teams in the Eastern Conference with the latter of the two holding the throne.
• The Canadiens had lost the first match-up (a wild one) at the Bell Centre back on March 2 by the score of the 7-6.
• Carey Price had bounced back in the following game on March 26 at the Consol Energy Center, delivering a solid performance while his team couldn’t pick up a single goal. The Canadiens ended up losing this one by the score of 1-0.
• In this final game of the season between both teams, Peter Budaj will get the start for the Canadiens after Michel Therrien decided Carey Price needs a mental rest.
• The Penguins continue to excel this season, even without key players in the lineup like some guys I heard of called Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Supposedly, they’re pretty good.

► Max Pacioretty likes the Flyers (too bad they won’t play them again):

• Max Pacioretty has been productive against the Philadelphia Flyers this season.
• Against the Flyers this season, Pacioretty has picked up a goal and five assists for six points in three games averaging two points per game.
• His three two-point games give him thirteen on the season, but he’s never had more than two points in a game this season.

► Norris-Watch:

• P.K. Subban added two assists to his season total against the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday.
• Subban now leads all Canadiens players in points with 36 (11 goals and 25 assists), two more than both Michael Ryder and Max Pacioretty who have 34 points a piece.
• P.K. also leads all NHL defencemen with 36 points, five more than the current runner up Ryan Suter who has 31 points.
• His [Subban] 11 goals are also tops amongst NHL defencemen but Mike Green has closed the gap and is one goal behind with 10.
• Norris?

► Rookie Watch:

• Monday night, Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher both picked up a goal in the 7-3 loss to the Flyers.
• Gallagher now totals 13 goals and 11 assists for 24 points on the season.
• Galchenyuk has 7 goals and 15 assists for 22 points on the season.
• Respectively, they rank third and sixth for total points amongst rookies in the league.

Top 10 NHL Rookies / Total Points

1. Jonathan Huberdeau (FLA): 13G, 14A, 27PTS
2. Cory Conacher (TBL): 10G, 16A, 26PTS
3. Brendan Gallagher (MTL): 13G, 11A, 24PTS
4. Brandon Saad (CHI): 9G, 15A, 24PTS
5. Nail Yakupov (EDM): 10G, 13A, 23PTS
6. Alex Galchenyuk (MTL): 7G, 15A, 22PTS
7. Mike Zibanejab (OTT): 7G, 13A, 20PTS
8. Justin Schultz (EDM): 6G, 14A, 20PTS
9. Alex Killorn (TBL): 7G, 11A, 18PTS
10. Patrick Wiercioch (OTT): 4G, 14A, 18PTS

Coach Michel Therrien:

• “I’m not here to talk about players. It’s really general.”
• “Everyone involved in tonight’s game was not ready to play.”
• “It’s pretty simple. It’s a game of pride. You have to come to the rink ready to play. You have to come to the rink and pay attention to detail and make sure you get the right attitude. This is exactly what we are not doing the last two games, with the results that we see.”
• “There’s no work ethic out there right now. We’re not paying attention to detail. It’s disappointing.”

Tomas Plekanec:

• “We have to go back to our game, start skating and start winning battles. For the biggest part of the season we were winning those battles, we were always first to the puck and always faster than the other teams. We let [Price] down and that definitely shouldn’t happen. He’s our goalie and we should be working to help him out a lot more than we are. He made two huge stops in that opening period and it could have been way more than 2-1 after the first.”

Brendan Gallagher:

• “[Price] made some big saves tonight and this definitely isn’t on Carey. As a group we’ve been giving up way too many chances and he still came up with some big saves in the first on a few breakaways. He gave us a chance to come back after the first period. It was only a 2-1 game because he was so good.”