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Canadiens – Penguins: Shutout by Price, Habs Eliminate Pens | GAME 4 RECAP

Rick Stephens

Montreal Canadiens vs Pittsburgh Penguins Game Recap: Habs Line-up, Score, Statistics, Highlights, Post-game Interviews, NHL Three-Stars, Qualifying Series, Game 4

FINAL | Qualifier Series, Game 4 | Friday August 7, 2020

Canadiens win best of five series 3-1
Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, ON

CANADIENS

Montreal

2-0

PENGUINS

Pittsburgh
(Photo by Andre Ringuette/Freestyle Photo/Getty Images)

Canadiens Lineup

Forward lines

Tomas Tatar – Nick Suzuki – Brendan Gallagher

Jonathan Drouin – Jesperi Kotkaniemi – Joel Armia

Paul Byron – Phillip Danault – Artturi Lehkonen

Dale Weise – Max Domi – Alex Belzile

Defence pairings

Ben Chiarot – Shea Weber

Brett Kulak – Jeff Petry

Xavier Ouellet – Victor Mete

Goaltenders

Carey Price – Charlie Lindgren

Scratches

Ryan Poehling, Charles Hudon, Christian Folin, Noah Juulsen, Victor Olofsson, Cayden Primeau, Michael McNiven, Jordan Weal

Ineligible

Alexander Romanov

Injuries/Unfit to Play

Jake Evans

Game Report

This all seems a bit surreal. The Montreal Canadiens have earned a berth into the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs. And they did so by eliminating the Pittsburgh Penguins, a team that finished 15 points ahead of the Habs in the regular season.

The Canadiens only gained entrance to the play-in round given the NHL’s need to make up revenue lost during the pause of the season due to the pandemic. Sculpting the return-to-play rules to include big market cities like Montreal, Chicago and New York City annoyed the hockey purists but allowed the league and players to begin the financial healing.

The Canadiens vs Penguins was deemed the most lopsided series of the Qualifying Round. (At this point, it seems non-trivial to specify that Pittsburgh was the team heavily favored to win.) The most popular prediction was Penguins in four games. 

Analysts conceded that the Canadiens goaltender could steal one game to prolong the series a day. But instead Carey Price stole the entire series. Yes, the series.

While some can’t resist the urge to spread the credit around, the Penguins forward lines dominated the Canadiens in each one of the first three games (by the eye test and aided by advanced statistics.) Price was the reason that Montreal had won two of those games coming into today’s match. And then in game four, all Carey did was to post a shutout in a more closely-contested game.

Artturi Lehkonen, one of the Habs best forwards throughout the series scored the game-winner with just 4:11 left. 

The Canadiens wait to face the winner of the Philadelphia Flyers vs Tampa Bay Lightning for round one of the 2020 playoffs at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday. And this unreal season for the Habs continues into the second week of August.

Plus / Minus

▲▲ Carey Price

▲  Artturi Lehkonen, Paul Byron, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Shea Weber, Ben Chiarot, Phillip Danault

▼  Alex Belzile, Dale Weise, Brendan Gallagher, Nick Suzuki, Tomas Tatar, Xavier Ouellet, Max Domi

The Numbers

 Game Statistics 
CANADIENS   PENGUINS
22 Shots 22
50 Face-off % 50
0-for-2 Power Play 0-for-2
4 Penalty Minutes 4
48 Hits 35
49 Corsi For 42
 Scoring Summary
 FINAL 1 2 3 OT SO T
 Canadiens (3-1) 0 0 2 – – 2
 Penguins (1-3) 0 0 0 – – 0
Scorers Goalies
  • MTL: Lehkonen (1), Weber (2)-EN 
  • PIT: no scoring
  • MTL: Price (W) 3-1
  • PIT: Jarry (L) 0-1

Stars of the Game

 NHL Official Three Stars
  1. Carey Price  MTL
  2. Artturi Lehkonen  MTL
  3. Jeff Petry  MTL

Watch

 Video Highlights 

What Did They Say?

 Post-game Quotes
Claude Julien
  • “This was our fourth game in seven nights, and I thought we did an excellent job of defending. We didn’t give them much. We knew their backs were against the wall. They were going to be desperate. But I think defensively, we did a great job.”

Carey Price

  • “We were definitely all motivated going into this series. Nobody was giving us a prayer to beat them. That definitely played a factor into it. I thought we all took it with a grain of salt. Went out there and just tried to prove everybody wrong.”
Artturi Lehkonen
  • “Everybody was kind of counting us off. So of course, it feels good to win this series. But it was one series, and now we have to enjoy this for a moment and then move on.”

Penguins defenceman Kris Letang

  • “When the puck dropped, we faced a well-balanced team with a great goaltender that played better than us. And I think that’s what happened.”

Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan

  • “I thought the first two games, we played extremely well. I thought the first game might have been our best. So we didn’t get the power play going in Game 1, but every other aspect of our game was pretty good. We needed our best tonight and we didn’t get it.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com

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