CANADIENS
Montreal

BRUINS
Boston

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Galchenyuk – Andrighetto
Eller – Plekanec – Byron
Fleischmann – Desharnais – Weise
Thomas – Flynn – Carr[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov – Subban
Emelin – Petry
Beaulieu – Gilbert[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Condon
Tokarski

Scratches:  
Injured reserve:  Brendan Gallagher, Torrey Mitchell, Carey Price
Suspended: Zack Kassian

Game Report

Goals saved above average is a statistic that we like to use to compare goaltenders. It is a number that represents  how a particular goalie performed relative to an average goalie in the league. Positive numbers are good, negative numbers are below average.

Carey Price led the league with a rating of 36.70 last season and second place Devan Dubnyk wasn’t even close. Over the course of the season Price saved almost 37 goals that wouldn’t have been stopped by an average goalie. Dustin Tokarski posted a GSAA of -2.56, a little worse than the average NHL goalie.

In just 12 starts this season, Price has a phenomenal GSAA of 6.93. By contrast, Mike Condon is ranked at -0.84. For Condon in his first NHL season, performing at that level can be seen as an accomplishment.

But this team is built around getting extraordinary goaltending. And given that it is just average right now, the Canadiens are struggling. The Habs have lost three straight.

But that’s not to blame Condon. No one should have expected him to step in and replicate the heroics of Carey Price. It was incumbent on the coaching staff to make adjustments to exploit the talents of their team.

Putting their players in a position to succeed is not a strength of Michel Therrien. Tonight it was Alex Galchenyuk’s turn to get thrown to the wolves (or bears). Therrien removed his safety net in Lars Eller who had been superb at making up for Galchenyuk’s defensive inadequacies.

Therrien also decided not to take advantage of last change to get favorable matchups for his young centre. Claude Julien was only too happy to send out a steady diet of Zdeno Chara when the Galchenyuk line was on the ice. For good measure, Patrice Bergeron, one of the best defensive forwards in the game, was thrown into the mix.

It was hard to tell if the coach was trying to win a hockey game or prove a point. Therrien was only too happy to, more than once, tell media that Galchenyuk had a “tough game” during his post-game press conference.

Playing against the opposition’s best is something Tomas Plekanec and Max Pacioretty have done many times. And the two have good chemistry together.  Clearly the good chemistry tag also applies to Galchenyuk and Eller. But Therrien is a stubborn one. It is unclear what changes he will make for the two remaining games this week.

The Canadiens will be in Detroit on Thursday to face the Red Wings. Dustin Tokarski is expected to start in net.

▲     Tomas Plekanec, Lars Eller, Alexei Emelin, Paul Byron

▼    P.K. Subban, Mike Condon, David Desharnais, Nathan Beaulieu, Christian Thomas, Alex Galchenyuk, Max Pacioretty

1. Tuukka Rask  BOS
2. Patrice Bergeron  BOS
3. Paul Byron  MTL

• On Alex Galchenyuk: “Really tough night.”

Max Pacioretty

• “It’s adversity, obviously, but we’ve got to handle it the right way. We’ll see what we’re made of [Thursday].”
• “It was a great play by Chara to spring [Eriksson] for a breakaway, but we can’t take our foot off the gas after that happens.”
• “We played well until we fell asleep there. Glad we play tomorrow.”

Mike Condon

• “There’s no panic. These things happen. You can’t feel sorry for yourselves, you’ve just got to show up (Thursday) and keep working hard, that’s the only thing you can do.“

Bruins forward Patrice Bergeron

• “It’s good to realize we can beat them. That’s a very good team, we respect them a lot, but we can compete with them and it’s a big win for us.”

Bruins coach Claude Julien

• “We haven’t had a ton of luck lately against them. I think they’ve pretty well had their way with us for almost a year and a half at least. So it was nice for us to get this win.“

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com