CANADIENS
Montreal

BLUES
St. Louis

Game Notes:

60 minutes.  The Canadiens played one of their most complete games of the season against the Blues, one of the most well-balanced teams in the league, not to mention one of the best coached.  The Habs were patient not forcing opportunities, finished their chances, were disciplined in not taking a single penalty, avoided chasing the play by driving possession and got off to a good start. Superb goaltending by Carey Price provided several game turning moments with spectacular saves that quelled the Blues attack particularly the dangerous Vladimir Tarasenko line.

On track for 40. Max Pacioretty picked up two goals on his 26th birthday, one on a breakaway.  He said after the game that this is the stage in his season when he begins heating up.  Pacioretty now has 10 goals in 21 goals which puts him close to a pace to reach a 40-goal season.

Best line. With Lars Eller facing his former team, Michel Therrien iced Eller’s line for the opening faceoff. The trio did not disappoint spending their entire first shift in the Blues zone.  If not for a great save by Jake Allen, Brandon Prust would have opened the scoring within the first minute.  Eller’s line was the best for the Canadiens throughout the game with Lars picking up his sixth of the season on four shots..

Merit. With another 0-for night for the power-play, Arpon Basu presented stats about the use of personnel on the man advantage during an intermission feature. He showed that the despite receiving 52.7 percent of the icetime during the man advantage, the David Desharnais line only had three goals.  Basu said that the coaching staff should move to a merit-based system in allocating icetime suggesting that Lars Eller’s line was deserving.

Enough is enough. Although Marc Bergevin is fond of saying that a team can never have too many defensemen, the words can’t be true.  With the addition of Bryan Allen, the Canadiens will have seven NHL defensemen in Montreal: Subban, Markov, Gonchar, Emelin, Allen, Gilbert and Weaver.  The Habs will have four NHL defenseman in Hamilton: Tinordi, Beaulieu, Pateryn and Drewiske.  While depth is important, it impacts the development of prospects and hits the cap.  Of a salary budget of $67.5M, the Canadiens are currently spending $32.4M on defenceman.  By contrast, St. Louis, one of the league’s best defensive teams, have payroll of $23.7M for their defencemen.

Plus / Minus

▲   Carey Price, Max Pacioretty, Lars Eller, Alexei Emelin, Sergei Gonchar, Jiri Sekac, Dale Weise, P.K. Subban, Brendan Gallagher

▼   David Desharnais

1.  Max Pacioretty  MTL 
2.  Carey Price  MTL
3.  Sergei Gonchar  MTL

• “It’s a bit early to be making statements, but it’s the type of game that can give you a lot of confidence, especially with the way we played against another strong team Tuesday.  The fun part of the NHL is you get a chance to make up for it. We had that chance tonight, a chance to play against another big team. We had a chance to show we learned something, and that’s what we did.”

Max Pacioretty

• “You know, these are statement games. We had stretches where we struggled to score goals, and then we come in and score four against a team that doesn’t give up many, and that really helps the confidence for us going forward, but I think it definitely makes a statement and shows that we’re able to play with the big boys in the [Western Conference]. They’re a great team over there and hopefully we opened up a few eyes [Thursday] and now can keep it going.”
• “I think I told my parents this is normally a time where I start to heat up, right around my birthday, so I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but I’m happy to contribute and hopefully I can keep going now.”

Lars Eller

• “It always feels good to score, especially against your old team, I’m not going to lie about that. I think it’s the first time we’ve beat them since I’ve been here, so that was a good feeling. We’re going up against some of the top teams and it’s a great measuring stick for us and we show that we can play with them when we play to our strengths.”

Blues defenceman Alex Pietrangelo

• “We haven’t been really executing the game plan that we want to bring forward. It’s a good hockey club over there. You’ve got to play your game if you want to beat them. (Carey) Price came up with some big saves. … We’ve got to start taking care of our end and helping out our goalies a little bit more.”

Blues coach Ken Hitchcock

• “To me, unless we clean up our own end, it doesn’t matter how many goals we score. So we’ve got to clean up our own end to start with.”
• “We made some mistakes on our half of the red line. We made some puck errors that ended up in our net. We got caught on a poor change. [We] gave a big push when it was 2-1. We had all the scoring chances going and then the third one really took the wind out of our sails.”