CANADIENS
Montreal

BLUE JACKETS
Columbus

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Desharnais – Shaw
Radulov – Galchenyuk – Gallagher
Lehkonen – Plekanec – Byron
Danault – Mitchell – Flynn[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Emelin – Weber
Markov – Petry
Beaulieu – Pateryn
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Montoya
Price

Scratches

Daniel Carr, Joel Hanley

Injured Reserve

Zach Redmond

Game Report

If you have having been following our game reports, you were prepared for this loss. Perhaps not the magnitude, but a Canadiens loss was on the horizon given the significant drop in performance over the past four games (despite the wins.)

In the first period of tonight’s game, Sportsnet commentator Jason York said, “This isn’t the same Montreal Canadiens team that we’ve seen earlier in the season.” Apparently York saw what we’ve been seeing lately.

In the post-game presser, Michel Therrien said, “The coaching staff, we saw [the loss] coming.”

Awesome! We all agree. We could see the decline in the Canadiens’ play and the increasing reliance on goaltending. But of the three of us,  the one who could have done something to stop the slide, did nothing. 

In fact, the Canadiens were cruising along until Therrien scrambled his lines. The chemistry and dominating play hasn’t been the same since.

It’s rather similar to last season when on December 3rd, Therrien deployed David Desharnais, Max Pacioretty and Dale Weise on his first line. It was the first time we saw that combination last year. Coming into the game the Canadiens were 19-4-3.

The loss in that game began the worst December record in franchise history. From that point to the end of the season, the Canadiens owned the worst record in the NHL.

Coming into tonight, in the four games since Therrien first handed Desharnais the role of number one centre, Davey has 0 goals, 0 assists, 0 points and most remarkably 0 shots on goal. His faceoff success was 8-for-26 which is 30 per cent.

Tonight, Desharnais was worse. He was in the penalty box when the league’s best power-play scored the first goal of the game. Desharnais was on the ice for the next two goals against. He finished the night with a minus-4 ranking.

Is it any wonder that this team was primed for a loss?

But this loss was massive. And embarrassing. The famous cannon in Columbus was fired 11 times. Mercifully, Tim Peel (of all referees) called back a goal.

Some radio folks claimed that it is easier to forget a blowout loss. I guarantee you that the Canadiens players won’t forget this game for awhile. And neither will other teams in the league.

You see that a team sporting a 9-0-1 record is one that has a bit of swagger. It can be intimidating to play against such a team.

But suffer a humiliating loss to the 26th place team in the league and everybody thinks that they can beat you.

The Canadiens need to get back on track in a hurry. They have been badly outplayed in the past three games. And although Carey Price will be back in goal against the Flyers, they can’t leave it all to him to deliver the win.

~~~

▲     Shea Weber

▼     Michel Therrien, David Desharnais, Andrew Shaw

1. Nick Foligno  CBJ
2. Josh Anderson  CBJ
3. Alexander Wennberg  CBJ

• “We saw it coming. Like in baseball, we saw it coming like a big curveball. When you keep doing bad things, eventually you’re going to get burned. We saw it coming with the way we played last game [against Vancouver].”
• “It’s tough. I don’t think I’ve experienced something like this before. There isn’t anything positive to take away from tonight’s game.”

Max Pacioretty

• “It’s frustrating. We’ve done a lot of good things lately. It hasn’t been perfect. I think the reason why we’ve won so many games is because we stuck together and played for one another. We left Monty out to dry. That’s what’s frustrating, because we pride ourselves on being such a close group. To leave our goalie out to dry like that is very frustrating.”
• “That’s definitely the outcome that we deserved. But, the good news is that we turn around and play again at home. It’s tough to shake it off when you get scored on that many times. But, we’ll see what type of group we have when we lace them up [against the Flyers].”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com