CANADIENS
Montreal

RED WINGS
Detroit

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Pacioretty- Galchenyuk – Byron
Eller – Plekanec – Mitchell
Matteau – Desharnais – McCarron
Lessio – Danault – Brown[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov- Emelin
Beaulieu – Pateryn
Hanley – Dietz
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Scrivens
Condon

Scratches:  Sven Andrighetto, Jacob De la Rose, Mark Barberio, Victor Bartley, Brendan Gallagher (lower-body), P.K. Subban (upper-body)
Injured reserve:  Carey Price, Daniel Carr, Brian Flynn, Jeff Petry, Tom Gilbert

Game Report

This is the type of game that the Canadiens won 2-1 last season with Carey Price in the goal. That’s not to put the loss at the feet of Ben Scrivens. He is the type of goalie who fails to make the saves he should and then in the next breath makes a save that he shouldn’t.

But moreso that the Habs put in a strong 20 minutes of work, scoring three goals in the final frame. This followed a feeble period of hockey where the Canadiens were outshot 21-5. Shot attempts were 33-10 as Detroit dominated possession.

Some will point to injuries as the problem. But the Canadiens current lineup includes: their top scorer, their most experienced defenceman, their best shutdown forward and their number one centre (well, unless he is playing wing again.)

So with a strong system and a coach who was skilled at getting the best out of his lineup, shouldn’t the team be, at the very least, competitive?

Perhaps it has something to do with a fourth line centre being given more icetime than the first line centre.  With a shade under 18 minutes, Torrey Mitchell had more icetime than Alex Galchenyuk.

It should also be a concern that the 6-foot-6-inch centre who graduated from the AHL this season had just 11:33 of icetime while the 5-foot-6-inch centre who deserves to be permanently dispatched to the AHL, played four minutes more at 15:33.

Inexplicably, Therrien promoted David Desharnais from his initial third line assignment despite playing a dreadful game. Desharnais was lazily coasting around the blueline while Riley Sheahan scored the opening goal of the game. And it only got worse from there.

Desharnais posted an abysmal even strength Corsi for percentage of 14.29. Don’t like Corsi? With Desharnais on the ice, the Canadiens had just two even strength shot attempts for the entire game. And they gave up 12!

With 16 seconds to go and a chance to tie the game, coach Therrien choose to send out Desharnais as the extra attacker keeping Lars Eller on the bench. Eller had five shots on goal, second-highest on the team. Desharnais had none.

Desharnais found himself to the left of the Detroit goal with an open side but was easily knocked off the puck. Game over.

It’s more than injuries. Even more than the loss of Carey Price. The Montreal Canadiens hockey club does not value merit-based decision-making. It’s a serious problem and one that is organizational-wide. And for 23 years it has led to cruel consequences for Habs fans.

The Canadiens return home to host the New York Rangers in a Saturday night game at the Bell Centre.

~~~

▲     Max Pacioretty, Tomas Plekanec, Lars Eller, Alexei Emelin, Andrei Markov

▼     David Desharnais, Phillip Danault, Nathan Beaulieu, Stefan Matteau

1. Riley Sheahan  DET
2. Brendan Smith  DET
3. Max Pacioretty  MTL

• “In the second period they came at us with a lot of speed and you can’t forget you had on our back side (defensemen), we don’t have a lot of experience.”

Max Pacioretty

• “Nothing special was said after the second period, in this room we just knew we had to be better. We watched them play with the puck for the entire period and it was frustrating. If there was a bright spot to this game it’s obviously how we rebounded in the third.”

Mike McCarron

• “I don’t think we got off to the start that we wanted to. The first two periods killed us, but I thought we had a great third. We came back with some jump and made it a tight game.”
• “I thought we were connecting on plays, getting the puck deep on the forecheck against their defense, and playing our style of game.”
• “I was nervous. I’ve got to learn how to manage that, and learn how to play in front of lots of family and friends. It was my first time and it was a learning experience for me with those jitters.”

Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill

• “We got to win hockey games, period. There’ll be lots of other tough games for other teams but we have to win hockey games. We have to earn our way in and to do that you’ve got to win.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com