CANADIENS
Montreal

BRUINS
Boston

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Plekanec – Gallagher
Galchenyuk – Desharnais – Weise
Fleischmann – Eller – Byron
Flynn – Mitchell – Smith-Pelly [/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov- Subban
Emelin – Petry
Beaulieu – Barberio[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Condon
Scrivens

Scratches: Greg Pateryn, Victor Bartley, Jacob De la Rose
Injured reserve:  Carey Price, Tom Gilbert

Game Report

For the first time this season, the Montreal Canadiens are out of a playoff position. They have fallen to tenth place in the Eastern conference behind the New Jersey Devils and Ottawa Senators.  And given that teams behind the Habs have games in hand, it could get worse before it gets better.

It was Montreal’s 20th loss of the season on Tuesday night. That’s more losses than the Penguins, Flyers and Hurricanes all teams who trail the Habs in the standings. And to add insult to injury, 20 losses is the same number as the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Canadiens next opponent.

How in the world did this happen?

Michel Therrien is fond of saying that evaluating a performance is not always about results. On December 26, following a 1-9-0 stretch, Therrien said, “You know what? We’re playing better structure-wise the last 10 games than the first 10 games. But we don’t have the results.”

Since then the Canadiens have stumbled along with a record of 3-7-1.  The results still aren’t there. With just four wins in their last 21 games, at what point does a coach admit that the structure must change to turn around the result?

When you are a stubborn Michel Therrien, you don’t.

Parroting the company line, Max Pacioretty spoke about knowing that the system works because it worked in October. And the captain expressed confidence that it would work again.

In other words, the coach isn’t changing the system anytime soon.  And there you have one of the key reasons that Marc Bergevin can’t delay the inevitable any longer. He must fire his friend.

Some fans are holding out hope that the return of Carey Price will be the panacea for the Canadiens. Perhaps the Habs brass is under the same impression. But on the current trajectory, the Habs may be kissing the playoffs goodbye if nothing changes.

Michel Therrien stood up for his players, particularly Andrei Markov and Mike Condon in his post-game presser. That was not the only thing that was out of the ordinary. The emotion in Therrien’s voice and his body language telegraphed that even he is aware that his job is hanging by a thread.

And with the Habs not playing again until Saturday, there’s plenty of time for Bergevin to make a move. Will the Habs GM vastly overpay on one more trade to save his coach? Or will he do the right thing to start to turn the season around?

The Canadiens will be in Toronto for a game with the Maple Leafs on Saturday.

~~~

▲    Alexei Emelin

▼    Mike Condon, Alex Galchenyuk, David Desharnais, Dale Weise, Andrei Markov

1. Patrice Bergeron  BOS
2. Tuukka Rask  BOS
3. Mark Barberio  MTL

• “We’ve been going through a tough time and I have enough that people are criticizing those guys because, you know what? Their work ethic, it’s outstanding. Again tonight, the only thing that I could ask to play them in a structure and it’s going to allow them to get scoring chances, to get pucks at the net, and to play solid defensively. The execution, is it there all the time? Probably not, probably not, like all teams and all players. But those guys don’t deserve to get criticized with their effort. They don’t deserve to get criticized.“

Max Pacioretty

• “Really what it comes down to is we’ve got to stay positive right now and every day’s a new day. The only way we’re going to get out of this is by being positive, working hard, and trying to get different results, but through that process. Obviously we’re frustrated, we want to get better and we want to win games, but we’ve just got to work hard every day and get out of this.“
• “I’m not looking for any moral victories. We aren’t looking to just beat them on the shot clock, we are looking to win games. We have to make sure we do what it takes to win the next game. We just have to focus on executing better, because we know that this works. The way we play our game works, the players that we have in this room works, it’s just not working right now. But it will work.”

Dale Weise

• “It’s tough to know what to say after a disappointing loss like that. You could say we worked hard and had some good spurts but at the end of the day you need to find a way to win hockey games. It’s been a tough stretch but every day is a new day, you have to try and reset and go out and win the next one. That’s all we can do at this point. This is a tight group; we play hard for each other. We pull together and stick together. We win as a team and lose as a team.”

Bruins coach Claude Julien

• “[David Pastrnak] did a great job. We put him on the fourth line not to have to play against top lines and, at the same time, with two guys that work their butts off and create things. So when I put them out there in the middle of the third period, I said, ‘Guys, go out there and have a great shift for us,’ and not only that, but [Pastrnak] did a great job of jumping on that loose puck and scoring the insurance goal. So he did a great job there, and for this young player who hasn’t played in a while, it was a good start for him.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com