Canadiens Lineup

Cole Caufield – Nick Suzuki – Kirby Dach

Evgenii Dadonov – Christian Dvorak – Brendan Gallagher

Joel Armia – Sean Monahan – Josh Anderson

Michael Pezzetta – Jake Evans – Juraj Slafkovsky

Mike Matheson – David Savard

Joel Edmundson – Kaiden Guhle

Jordan Harris – Johnathan Kovacevic

Jake Allen – Sam Montembeault

Chris Wideman, Arber Xhekaj

Carey Price (knee), Paul Byron (hip), Mike Hoffman (upper-body), Jonathan Drouin (upper-body)

Game Report

Sharks winger Matt Nieto opened the scoring just 1:33 into the game. That’s the third home game in a row that the Canadiens have trailed early. They haven’t been ready to start at the Bell Centre against Philadelphia, Buffalo and now San Jose.

Exacerbating the slow start was a failed challenge on the goal by Marty St. Louis. The Habs were then saddled with having to kill off an early San Jose power-play.

The Sharks took the first seven shots of the game. Then oddly, the Canadiens took the next eight shots. Five-on-five, Montreal had three high-danger scoring chances in the first period, none in the second, and three more in the third period.

But the Canadiens squandered multiple opportunities to get back into the game. They were 0-for-6 on the power-play. This included a 55-second 5-on-3 advantage to start the third period. And perhaps most surprisingly, the Habs generated just one high-danger scoring chance with the man advantage all game.

Montreal is now ranked 31st on power-play in the NHL with a 14.9 percent efficiency. The futility with the man advantage has carried on far too long particularly with the availability of scoring talent. Serious questions need to be asked whether Alex Burrows is capable of being a coach in this league.

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