CANADIENS
Montreal

SENATORS
Ottawa

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Lehkonen – Drouin – Byron
Pacioretty – Danault – Shaw
Hudon – Plekanec – Gallagher 
Galchenyuk – McCarron – Mitchell
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Mete – Weber
Alzner – Benn
Davidson – Petry
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Montoya
Price

Scratches

Jacob De La Rose, Joe Morrow

Injuries

David Schlemko – hand (mid-November), Ales Hemsky – concussion symptoms, Nikita Scherbak – knee

Game Report

What happens when two of the worst teams in their own ends meet each other? Six goals are scored in the first period alone.

The Canadiens scored four goals in the first frame on just seven shots. Craig Anderson wasn’t great. Al Montoya wasn’t much better. But the real problem for both of these teams is playing defence.

But somewhere in the past two games, the Canadiens figured out the importance of going to the net. The 29 shots on goal for the Habs was well below their season average but at least half of them came from high danger areas of the ice and that’s a huge improvement.

Some will mourn the fact that Montreal lost the Corsi ‘battle’ for a rare time this season. But driving to the net created all sorts of difficulties for Anderson and the Ottawa defence. The Sens were awful in their own zone leaving the Canadiens in prime scoring positions.

This was a case of Ottawa being more bad than the Habs were good. But full credit to the visitors for burying their chances.

Charles Hudon and Artturi Lehkonen led the scoring parade. With three assists, Shea Weber has taken over the Canadiens lead in scoring. Max Pacioretty, Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher lead the team in goal scoring with four each. All three players picked up a goal in this game.

As for Galchenyuk, he has the top spot in shooting percentage for the team at 18.2. Yet, he had just 10:43 in icetime. Strangely, despite the blowout, Claude Julien saw fit to deploy  Michael McCarron for just 6:41. McCarron played very well each time he touched the ice. 

The Canadiens coach acknowledged that his team defended much better in this game. And given Montoya’s shaky outing, it was a good thing. After several games where he looked his age, Victor Mete returned to form with a solid game playing just over 16 minutes.

This game was a big confidence boost for the Canadiens, particularly the offence. But they will have to be much better as the road trip continues to Minnesota, Winnipeg and Chicago.

~~~

▲     Artturi Lehkonen, Charles Hudon, Alex Galchenyuk, Michael McCarron, Shea Weber, Tomas Plekanec, Max Pacioretty 

▼     Brandon Davidson, Al Montoya

1. Charles Hudon  MTL
2. Artturi Lehkonen  MTL
3. Tomas Plekanec  MTL

• “You can’t keep losing games and feel good about yourself, but when you’re winning the confidence comes back.”
• “I liked the way we defended tonight. They’re a very dangerous offensive team and I think the guys reacted well in the neutral zone. We didn’t give them a lot of chances and we were better in our own end.”

Shea Weber

• “We got some bounces, and the pucks found their way in. At the same time, we reacted better when we got scored on. The past few games, we’ve tended to take a step back when we got scored on and tonight, we did a better job of getting back on our game.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com