CANADIENS
Montreal

BLUE JACKETS
Columbus

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

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

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

Goaltenders:

Condon
Scrivens

Scratches: Greg Pateryn, Jacob De la Rose, Tom Gilbert
Injured reserve:  Carey Price, Paul Byron

Game Report

The Columbus Blue Jackets were 30th in the NHL coming into Monday’s game; the league’s last place team.

The Blue Jackets were playing without their head coach, John Tortorella, who is suffering from two broken ribs after a collision with Rene Bourque in practice last week.

Joonas Korpisalo, the Jackets third-string goaltender got the start.

With all of that going in their favor, the Canadiens still couldn’t get the win.  Add to the above, the hockey gods finally listened to Michel Therrien’s pleas and dumped a heap of ‘puck luck’ on the Habs. To no avail.

Brendan Gallagher scored Montreal’s first goal as the puck pinballed off Columbus players into the net. On a 5-on-3 power-play. The Habs second goal came as P.K. Subban stepped across the red line (yes, red line) and fired a shot past Korpisalo.

With Daniel Carr leaving the game early due to injury, Therrien went to work using his magic to reconfigure his lines.  Or more simply, he moved Brian Flynn up to the second line and Dale Weise down.

So, as you might guess, the Habs strongest player over the past five games received far less ice time than David Desharnais and Brian Flynn.

The loss ended the Canadiens winning streak at one, again.  As tweeted by Chantal Desjardins of Sportsnet “The Habs have now gone 25 straight games without back to back wins for the first time since Nov ’05-Jan ’06.” Yet another milestone of shame on the current edition of the team and its management.

It’s interesting to note that given their futility from November 2005 to January 2006, then head coach Claude Julien was fired by the Habs. Remember the other low water mark: the worst losing streak in 76 years? Head coach Pit Lepine was fired after that debacle too.

And Michel Therrien has a guarantee until the end of the year.

The Canadiens return to Montreal for the second game of the home-and-home series on Tuesday with the Blue Jackets.

~~~

▲    Lars Eller, Alexei Emelin

▼     Mike Condon, Mark Barberio, Nathan Beaulieu, Torrey Mitchell, Dale Weise, David Desharnais

1. Cam Atkinson  CBJ
2. Brandon Saad  CBJ
3. Brandon Dubinsky  CBJ

• “We just had bad execution again. We [allowed] three goals where we had the puck and we gave them the puck. It’s unacceptable.”
• “I’m disappointed with the way that we execute when we have the puck. We turn pucks over. You’re not going to win many games playing that way.”

Max Pacioretty

• “We’ve got to play better tomorrow. We really need to play for 60 minutes and get the ‘W’ before we go into the break. Everyone’s frustrated with the way tonight’s game went.“

P.K. Subban

• “I really felt going out in the third period it was our game. Those moments we lose the puck or lose our heads are costing us right now.“

Blue Jackets associate coach Craig Hartsburg

• “It wasn’t always pretty. We weren’t perfect. I thought tonight we stayed with it. We didn’t crack. We made Montreal make some mistakes, which we capitalized on.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com