For yet another night, the 160ish in a row, the Montreal Canadiens were sold out. Not every seat was occupied because the weather was ugly today. The players didn’t have any problems showing up to the Bell Center where they defeated the Calgary Flames 4-1.
Facing a Mike Keenan hard working team with a great goaltender, one of the best forwards and one of the best defensemen, the Montreal Canadiens worked hard all night long. The first Habs to show great effort was Robert Lang who showed good speed to get a puck in the offensive zone, shot to the net and crashed in the boards as celebration. Okay, maybe it wasn’t celebration but it was still nice to watch a player give it all up like that. Lang actually scored two and added an assist bringing his total to 10 goals and 10 assists for 20 points. Mats who?
Matt D’Agostini continued to impress with another beauty of a goal in breakaway. It’s getting harder each day to find a good reason to send him back to the farm club. His five points in five games are impressive; his four goals were all impressive.
Andrei Markov brought back his A game. I was a little scared after the last game incident but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. Yes, he got caught too deep on the lone Calgary goal but we expect Markov to take chances offensively. Those things will happen. His work on the powerplay (it will unblock, it’s already working better) was sharp and his slapshot was great (although, his goal could end up going to Kovalev).
While we’re speaking of player who didn’t finish the game against New Jersey, Mathieu Dandenault didn’t finish this one either and by what we’ve learned, he broke his arm and could be out of action for a long time. Ryan O’Byrne will finally have a chance to play.
Let’s keep in the injury department as another often injured, at least this season, couldn’t finish the game. Chris Higgins left early with what could be a shoulder injury. Maybe even Guillaume Latendresse will have a second chance.
Jaroslav Halak wanted to erase his last couple of performances and while they will stay on the stat sheet, he showed great character tonight by giving the Habs a good game. He had trouble with his rebound control, again, but if he could get more than a game every two weeks it would be easier for him. Then again, it’s not like Carey Price is giving his coach any reason to play the backup more often.
Patrice Brisebois wasn’t playing too badly earlier this season but for the past couple of games he’s been worse than usual. He created many turnovers and needs to be more careful in his own zone. Obviously he will keep playing but I’d rather have him out than Ryan when Dandenault comes back. Then again, I could change my mind by then.
Sergei Kostitsyn was mostly invisible tonight which didn’t stop the fourth line from creating chances. It’s becoming clearer that guys like Maxime Lapierre and Steve Begin just work well together. Hopefully in the near future, they will be paired back with another hard worker who fit their style in Tom Kostopoulos. This could very well be one of the best fourth line in the Eastern conference.
In the end, it was a very solid effort and a good example of how good this team can be when they do the simple things the coaches ask: play 60 minutes. There is so much talent on this team, there is no reason why they shouldn’t win easily like that but they have to win. Not winning easily by working only one period and hoping they will score enough goals like they did earlier this season.
9 points in their last 5 games. 37 points in 27 games. 3rd place (forget the “divisional seeds” for now) in the conference only one point behind New York with three more games to play.
If they can work as well as they did tonight for the rest of the season, the conference title is still entirely possible.
The Drive for 25 is still alive.