CANADIENS
Montreal

DEVILS
New Jersey

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Galchenyuk – Drouin – Lehkonen
Scherbak – Danault – Gallagher
Byron – De La Rose – A. Shaw
Deslauriers – Froese – Carr
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Reilly – Petry
Alzner – Juulsen
Benn – Valiev

[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Lindgren
Fucale

Scratches

Logan Shaw

Injuries

Ales Hemsky – concussion, Shea Weber – lower-body, Carey Price – concussion, Charles Hudon – hand, Victor Mete – hand, Max Pacioretty – lower-body, David Schlemko – undisclosed, Antti Niemi – undisclosed

Game Report 

With playoffs out of the picture this season, the Canadiens remaining games can be used for lessons and evaluation. 

So what was learned?

The Montreal Canadiens road penalty-kill is the worst in the NHL. They are dead last with a pathetic 69.0 percent success rate. 

It means that the Habs have allowed 36 goals shorthanded in 32 away games. That total includes the three goals given up tonight as the Devils enjoyed a 60 percent success rate on the power-play.

It’s rather obvious that no team is going to win many games with that level of difficulty. 

Add to that, bad reads, lost battles and an inability to tie up the Devils forwards in the defensive zone, sunk the Canadiens before the clock struck 8 pm. New Jersey had a 4-0 lead after the first period. 

It was a tough night on the back end even for the young players like Noah Juulsen and Rinat Valiev.

With the defense struggling all season and the penalty-kill being the worst in the league, one wonders if J.J. Daigneault will be the first out the door on April 9th? Or perhaps Marc Bergevin will use the excuse that Shea Weber’s injury left a hole that he wasn’t able to fill.

But there were several positives for the remainder of the game. Full credit to Charlie Lindgren who received no support in the first period yet continued to battle for the full 60 minutes making several solid saves.

Also, Jacob De La Rose not only picked up two goals but his strong effort was the reason that the goals were scored in the first place.

===

▲  Jacob De La Rose, Brendan Gallagher, Daniel Carr, Byron Froese

▼  Noah Juulsen, Rinat Valiev, Jordie Benn, Karl Alzner, Nicolas Deslauriers, Jonathan Drouin, penalty-kill

1. Travis Zajac  NJD
2. Taylor Hall  NJD
3. Will Butcher  NJD

• “What I take out of tonight is how we fought to come back. No one in this locker room is proud of the first period and we have to take responsibility, but the character we showed is encouraging.”
• “If there’s something positive to come out of it, it’s that we improved as the game went on and the guys showed character by trying to come back.”
• “It’s a proof of character. It would’ve been easy to say that it wasn’t our night, but the guys battled and we like to see that, especially with all the young guys we have in the lineup.”

Jacob De La Rose

• “You always want to help the team score goals. I’ve been playing with more confidence lately. I’ve been trying to skate more and be more poised with the puck. I’m happy with the goals, but I’m here to win hockey games, not worry about my own stats.”

Charlie Lindgren

• “My answer is always that I want to stay in the gamed. I was happy they kept me in and let me battle it out. You can take a lot from a game like this. I’m not going to pout about it; you just have to move on and work hard tomorrow. That’s what I look forward to doing.“

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com