CANADIENS
Montreal

SENATORS
Ottawa

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Tatar – Danault – Gallagher
Drouin – Domi – Lehkonen
Byron – Kotkaniemi – Armia
Deslauriers – Peca – Shaw
[/one_half]

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

[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Niemi

Scratches

Mete (hand), Scherbak, Hudon

Injuries

Weber, Schlemko, Plekanec

Game Report 

After the Canadiens dispatched the St. Louis Blues for their third win in a row, it was all sunshine and lollipops among the Habs fanbase.

But a closer look revealed that the Blues were the better team for the final 40 minutes. It was only the extraordinary work by Carey Price and a little magic with 9.7 seconds left that delivered the victory.

Against the Ottawa Senators, the Canadiens were the better team for the first 20 minutes once again taking a 3-1 lead to the dressing room. But then it was all Ottawa. Montreal had 15 shots on goal in the first period and just 12 for the remaining 42:30.

Spending more time in the Montreal zone only exposed a defence that was not upgraded over the summer by Marc Bergevin. Karl Alzner is the rearguard that Habs fans love to criticize but he had company tonight.

For all those doing backflips over the return of Nicolas Deslauriers, your celebration may be short-lived. Deslauriers was conspicuous by how ill-matched he is to the new style of play by this team.

Credit to Jesperi Kotkaniemi who not only picked up an assist in almost 15 minutes of icetime, the 18-year-old came to the aid of Carey Price when Colin White ran into the Habs goaltender.

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▲  Carey Price, Paul Byron, Artturi Lehkonen, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Joel Armia, Noah Juulsen

▼  Jonathan Drouin, Tomas Tatar, Nicolas Deslauriers, Matthew Peca, Andrew Shaw, Karl Alzner, Xavier Ouellet, Mike Reilly

1. Mark Stone  OTT
2. Matt Duchene  OTT
3. Paul Byron  MTL

• “Without a doubt it was second period. I thought we got away from our game plan. We committed turnovers in the neutral zone and we weren’t moving the puck quickly enough. We started out the way we wanted to in the first period. In the third, we tried to adjust, but they gained a lot of confidence after the second and it was tough for us to come back. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and I hope that we learned a lesson.”

Brendan Gallagher

• “I don’t think we played a very smart hockey game. You have to be smart, especially on the road. We had a good first period and then we made some silly plays.”

Paul Byron

• “We played a good first period. We had four lines going and we had them on the ropes and then the second and third periods we didn’t play very well. (We made) a lot of mistakes. They pushed us, they forechecked well and we were spending too much time in our own zone. We didn’t generate any offence and they scored a couple of goals.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com