Habs News: Canadiens on the Market for Left Defence, Cale Fleury’s Time in Press Box, Power-Play off to Great Start
ROCKET SPORTS MEDIA | LAVAL, QC. — The Canadiens finished their four game home stand by splitting the two games this week. The week started the week on Tuesday with a 3-1 loss to the Lightning in a game where Tampa Bay needed just 2:08 of game time to score their three goals.
On Thursday, Montreal had an easy time in beating the Minnesota Wild by a 4-0 score. The fans at the Bell Centre that night had a chance to witness the first career goals of Victor Mete (finally) and Nick Suzuki. The last time that two Habs players scored their first career goal in the same game was on October 6, 2015 when Chris Higgins and Alexander Perezhogin both scored.
It was an unusual schedule over the weekend as the Habs played a pair of afternoon games. On Saturday, Montreal beat the defending Stanley Cup champions for the second time in eight days, and also snapping a four game losing streak in St.Louis. Brendan Gallagher‘s goal six seconds into the second period turned momentum into his team’s favour that went on to win 5-2. Jake Allen took blame for the loss as on that goal, Allen redirected Gallagher’s clearing attempt into his own net.
The week ended on Sunday with a 4-3 loss to Minnesota as the Canadiens blew a 2-1 and 3-2 lead. It looked like the fatigue of playing three games in four days impacted the team’s performance. Keith Kinkaid kept his team in the game by making 29 saves, 18 of them in the first period, and Philip Danault scored a pair of goals in a losing cause.
Montreal jumped on the plane right after Sunday’s game to head back home where they will host the San Jose Sharks on Thursday night and the Maple Leafs on Saturday. If the game against Toronto is even half as exciting as the 6-5 shootout in the first matchup of the season between these two teams, we will certainly be entertained.
On the Market for Left Defence
I like Mete as a defenceman. He’s able to move the puck well, but in my opinion Mete is not in the right chair as the team’s number one defenceman. The Mete – Shea Weber pairing struggled out of the gate, and progressively getting better over the last couple of games. Mete scoring his first goal in his 127th game might relieve some stress off his back, even though the defender said that he wasn’t feeling pressured to break the ice in the goal column.
If you needed more evidence that the organization reads the Habs Notepad every Monday, on Wednesday Claude Julien confirmed what I wrote in last week’s column, about the left defence being the team’s weakness.
“I work with what I have and that doesn’t mean that I’m not satisfied,” said Julien on Wednesday. “We’re looking for a left-handed defenceman, I’m not taking anything away from our defencemen, but it will position them in a better role than asking too much of them, just like we asked from Jeff Petry last year during Shea Weber’s absence. He had a lot on his plate. It’s the same for certain other players until we get a left-handed number one defenceman.”
Later in the day, Elliotte Friedman reported that Montreal has taken a look at Juuso Riikola of the Penguins. If you haven’t seen him play, the only thing that you would need to look at is the fact that he’s played in two games with Pittsburgh. That doesn’t make him a bad defenceman, but it certainly tell me that if he was played as the number one defenceman in Montreal, it would be another situation that a player is asked to have more responsibilities than they are ready for. That’s a recipe for failure.
Fleury’s Time in Press Box
After sitting out four consecutive games, Cale Fleury made his return to the lineup on Thursday night against the Wild. In his last game before being scratched, Fleury didn’t have a strong game, including a mistake that led to the Maple Leafs scoring.
“He’s had an average start, but a great camp and we’ve seen the better of him and we just want to give them a little bit of breathing room and sometimes watching from up top, I’ve said that before and and coming in, you’re a lot lot more comfortable,” said Julien prior to the game against the Lightning.
I don’t have any concerns with a young player like Fleury being in the press box occasionally for a couple of games, but I don’t think in these circumstances it was appropriate. The more time that a player doesn’t play, the more it affects the confidence.
Christian Folin took over Fleury’s spot during that sequence and struggled. I would have also approved the decision to keep Fleury out of the lineup for four games if the team was winning during that stretch, but that didn’t happen either as Montreal lost three of the four games without the rookie defenceman in the lineup.
Fleury played 16:38 and one shot in Thursday’s game and was sidelined on Saturday due to a minor injury and in his return to the lineup on Sunday against Minnesota, he played 14:07 and was on the ice when the game winning goal was allowed.
In the two games last week, Fleury has been playing with confidence, physical and came close to scoring his first goal on Sunday.
I understand the concept that the NHL isn’t a developmental league and the coach’s job is to win games. If Julien thinks that Fleury isn’t ready to help the team win now, they should send him to Laval, where he may be playing every game.
“Same fans that bark at us when we don’t win hockey games because we threw the kids out there,” responded Julien about fans wanting him to let the rookies make mistakes.
Power-play Off to Great Start
Last season, the Canadiens power play was embarrassing. I had my doubts on how it would be improved this season considering the minor changes to the players and no changes to the coaching staff.
Nine games into the season, the power-play unit has played well. They have scored at least one power play goal in eight of the nine games, giving them a total of nine goals with the extra man in 33 opportunities, which represents a 27.3 percent success rate.
“We’ve been saying it all along we need our power play to be better this year. We worked on it. Guys seem to have better chemistry having been together more or less, most of them for a year now. So we had a good start to it. Confidence is there, so we’re just kind of stay on top of it,” said the coach following Saturday’s game.
By Chris G., Senior Writer
All Habs Hockey Magazine
Copyright © 2019 Rocket Sports
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