CANADIENS
Montreal

BLUE JACKETS
Columbus

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Galchenyuk – Drouin – Byron
Pacioretty – Danault – Shaw
Hudon – Plekanec – Gallagher 
Mete – De La Rose – Froese
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Benn – Weber
Alzner – Petry
Davidson – Morrow
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Lindgren
Fucale

Scratches

Antti Niemi

Injuries

David Schlemko – hand, Ales Hemsky – concussion symptoms, Nikita Scherbak – knee,  Carey Price – lower-body, Al Montoya – concussion, Artturi Lehkonen – lower-body, Torrey Mitchell- flu

Game Report

Claude Julien deserves criticism for his player usage this season. His deployment of Alex Galchenyuk, in particular, has been awful. However, the Canadiens head coach was correct in choosing Tomas Plekanec to centre Paul Byron and Shea Weber for the first shift in overtime tonight.

As we have learned, possession is crucial in the extra frame so Julien had to send his best faceoff man over the boards. Plekanec was joined by Paul Byron, who was one of the Canadiens best forwards in this game. Shea Weber was the third member of the trio. Weber is the Habs best defenseman and is always a threat to score.

Next Julien went with Max Pacioretty, Phillip Danault and Jeff Petry. Pacioretty and Danult combined for 12 of the Canadiens 29 shots on goal. And Petry is a puck-moving defenceman. Unfortunately, Danault, Pacioretty and Petry are the three worst players on the team in the goals against per 60 category.

On the Columbus game-winning goal, Danault made a bad read choosing to double up on  Cam Atkinson who was already covered by Petry. In doing so, Danault ignored the high man, Zach Werenski, the Blue Jackets goal-scorer.

Danault’s fatal error ensured that Jonathan Drouin and Alex Galchenyuk never saw the ice in overtime. Why not start the 3-on-3 session with Drouin? Because the converted winger is the worst faceoff man on the Canadiens.

Drouin lost 67 per cent of his draws tonight. As noted earlier, possession is key in overtime particularly from the first faceoff. With Drouin on the ice to open overtime, the line would have spent the entire shift chasing the puck. Anf even if Drouin retrieved the puck, he isn’t scoring anyway.

Which brings us to Marc Bergevin’s little experiment at the number one centre position. If the general manager was being honest and judging on merit, he might say something like, ‘I’ve seen enough, I don’t need 10 more tries. I know that he is not a centre.’

But Bergevin is not honest. So expect the Canadiens to continue to force the square pegged winger in a round hole. And don’t be surprised when the coach cannot deploy his acting number one centre into critical situations.

It is fruitless to try to put the genie back in the bottle by imagining what the Canadiens lineup would look like with Mikhail Sergachev, Alexander Radulov and Andrei Markov. But when evaluating the Habs GM, consideration should be given that Sergachev alone (surprisingly) would easily make up for Drouin’s offense (and more) already this season.  Radulov is comfortably ahead of Drouin in all categories as well. And it’s not hard to factor in Markov’s contribution.

The offense continues to shoot blanks. Shots on goal are pretty in the boxscore but the Habs are having considerable difficulty converting them into goals. The Canadiens can’t score, something that Bergevin claimed to have fixed in the off-season. 

But the general manager also claimed that this year’s edition of the defence is better than last season. That statement is clearly laughable. Joe Morrow and Brandon Davidson are not playing anywhere close to a NHL level. And tonight, Karl Alzner also had a few gaffes.

The Canadiens have scored three goals in two games but have managed to collect three points. They can thank Charlie Lindgren for that who delivered another solid game. Lindgren kept his team in the game until Paul Byron tied it up with less than eight minutes left in the third period.

Despite the movement surrounding the Habs’ complement of goaltenders, it is the strongest part of the team right now. The defence remains porous and the offence is one of the worst in the league.

Lucky for the Canadiens, the Arizona Coyotes arrive on Thursday. The Coyotes have not yet won a game this season in regulation time.

~~~

▲     Charlie Lindgren, Paul Byron, Alex Galchenyuk

▼     Phillip Danault, Joe Morrow, Brandon Davidson

1. Sergei Bobrovsky  CBJ
2. Paul Byron  MTL
3. Seth Jones  CBJ

• “[The injury] is something [Artturi Lehkonen] been playing with for a while, and he’s done a good job of playing with that injury. But it’s coming to the point where it was unbearable and we needed to shut him down. If we want him to be better, we had to shut him down. So, it was the right move to make, I guess, at this time. Give him credit, he tried his best to play through it. Right now, we don’t know how long, so he’s out indefinitely.”

Charlie Lindgren

• “Every game, I want to be as perfect as I can be.”

Phillip Danault

• “It was my fault (the game-winning goal). I made a small mental mistake by not taking care of my player for two seconds and he managed to score.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com