CANADIENS
Montreal

BRUINS
Boston

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

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

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

Goaltenders:

Condon
Tokarski

Scratches: Jarred Tinordi, Alex Semin
Injured reserve:  Carey Price
Suspended: Zack Kassian

Game Report

For those willing to be dismissive about the opponent given the Canadiens recent success, the Bruins said, not so fast. The Canadiens haven’t trailed very often this season but did so on Saturday night with 1-0 and 2-1 deficits.

It would take some heroics by Mike Condon, typical Bruin behaviour leading to penalties and a three-goal third period for the win. The Canadiens now have 13 wins in 16 tries good enough for first place overall with 27 points, five points ahead of the Rangers and Stars.

The most impressive part of the start to the season is a goal differential of plus-30, that’s 13 goals ahead of the next best competitor.

For a good portion of the game, the guys in stripes were the singular focus. Referees Chris Lee and TJ Luxmore did their best to try to inject themselves into the spotlight.

The Canadiens persevered through some tough calls, and with the help of two power-play goals were able to come out on top. They stayed in the game despite some adversity and found a way to win in the third.

The Bruins will always be the Bruins. David Krejci took a retaliation penalty, his third of the game, with just over two minutes remaining in a tie game. And after the Canadiens scored the go-ahead goal on the power-play, who does Claude Julien send out with a minute to go in the game: Zac Rinaldo.

It wouldn’t be a Bruin game without mentioning Alexei Emelin. The Canadiens defenceman had seven hits on the night including a patented Emelin BOOM on rookie Frank Vatrano.

It’s been hard to criticize Mike Condon through the impressive start to his career but he did look shaky at times in this game. That said, Condon recovered from his mistakes and did all he could to keep his team in the game.

The Canadiens don’t play next until Wednesday when they head to Pittsburgh to take on the Penguins.

▲     Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Plekanec, Lars Eller, Alex Galchenyuk, David Desharnais, Alexei Emelin, Mike Condon

▼

1. David Desharnais   MTL
2. Tomas Plekanec  MTL
3. Mike Condon  MTL

• “We know the type of player Rinaldo is. From the bench, it looked like (Beaulieu) was trying to protect himself. When you see a guy coming with less than 30 seconds left your first instinct is to protect yourself, so I don’t expect any suspension.“

Tomas Plekanec

• “It wasn’t [David Krejci’s] best penalty.”
• “It was a tough first period, we took three penalties and they took control of the momentum of the game. We just had to put it all behind us and start over again. And we did. I thought we played very well in the second and third periods.”

Brendan Gallagher

• “They called it a goal on the ice. I saw the replay. Obviously I’m getting pushed in and trying to get out of the way. I don’t know what else I can do except take it, and thankfully the guys picked me up and we won the game.“

Bruins forward David Krejci

• “Stupid penalty; two minutes left, tie game, the guys battled hard and then I do something like that, so it was stupid and it cost us the game.”

Bruins coach Claude Julien

• “It’s pretty obvious that we’ve lost the last two games because of [penalties], and the disappointing part is it’s coming from our leaders. If you’re going to go in the right direction I think it’s important that our leaders lead the way the right way. And really, really bad penalties there and the team that we played [Saturday] seems to find ways to win, and right now I’d say we’re finding ways to lose.“

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com