CANADIENS
Montreal

SHARKS
San Jose

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Pacioretty- Plekanec – Gallagher
Galchenyuk – Eller – Andrighetto
De la Rose – Danault – Byron
Mitchell – McCarron – Brown[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov- Subban
Emelin – Pateryn
Bartley – Barberio
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Condon
Scrivens

Scratches:  Morgan Ellis, Lucas Lessio, Stefan Matteau
Injured reserve:  Carey Price, Daniel Carr, Brian Flynn, Jeff Petry, David Desharnais, Tom Gilbert, Nathan Beaulieu

Game Report

We were treated to another youthful performance of the new look Montreal Canadiens on Monday night. Unfortunately, the IceCap-heavy lineup was not facing the Marlies this time but a big, strong, fast, skilled team from San Jose.

A bad goal allowed by Sharks netminder Martin Jones kept the Habs in the game for two periods. But in the third, San Jose coach Pete DeBoer turned his troops loose. And the result wasn’t pretty.

Seemingly, the Canadiens should have been the stronger team in the final frame. San Jose was playing the second half of a back-to-back with the first game on the road. The Sharks were 4-1 winners in Vancouver on Sunday.

Prior to the start of the third period, when asked if the Sharks would need to conserve their energy, DeBoer answered, “We’re going to try to put our foot on the gas here for 20 minutes. We have tomorrow off so we want to empty the tank.”

Refreshing, isn’t it?  When was the last time you heard Michel Therrien say something similar? Umm, never.

Fans appreciate the opportunity to see their young players get icetime. But is it really helpful to their development if they are set up to fail?

We are all fully aware that Therrien robotically rolls four lines. And it’s known that a coach doesn’t always get the matchup he wants on the road. But to see the Habs line centred by Phillip Danault constantly getting steamrolled by the likes of Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, Tomas Hertl, Brent Burns and Paul Martin was painful.

And unfair to Danault, Jacob De la Rose and Paul Byron.

Victor Bartley, in the lineup ahead of Morgan Ellis to help justify the Jarred Tinordi trade, was a disaster. So was Mark Barberio. The talent of the Sharks made them look silly.

Mike Condon didn’t have a chance on the majority of the goals allowed but didn’t do himself any favors with his poor positioning and lack of rebound control.

The next 19 games are not going to easy to watch but will be worthwhile if the young players are put in a position to succeed and develop to be ready for next season.

Earlier in the day, Marc Bergevin said, “We have some young players, a young core, and yes we’ve had some major hiccups, but I know we’re going in the right direction.”

Unfortunately we haven’t seen evidence of that so far.

The Canadiens will be in Anaheim on Wednesday and in Los Angeles on Thursday as their western road trip continues.

~~~

▲     Lars Eller, Alex Galchenyuk, Alexei Emelin

▼     Victor Bartley, Mark Barberio, Phillip Danault, Jacob De la Rose

1. Joe Thornton  SJS
2. Joe Pavelski  SJS
3. Brent Burns  SJS

• “We had a tough time getting engaged in this game. They were better than we were. Nights like these are going to happen. We have a very young team right now. There are nights that are going to be tougher than others. This was one of those nights.”

Lars Eller

• “We weren’t good enough in the last 20. We were just a step behind. You do that against this team and they’re going to make you look bad. They made us look bad in the third.”
• “There’s absolutely no excuse. They had a trade deadline, too. They had a game last night. They were just better than us in the third. Plain and simple.”

Brendan Gallagher

• “They’re a good team, obviously. We know that. We knew that on this road trip we were going to play some very good teams. But, for us, I don’t think we can be happy enough with our effort. We allowed them to have too much time and space. Good players are going to take advantage of it.”
• “There are things that we can control every game. Our compete level and our battle level wasn’t where it needed to be.”

Mike Condon

• “They had a lot of good looks and they buried them. That’s hockey sometimes, and we’ve got to be better.”
• “We’ve just to compete better. I thought they worked really hard behind the net and they did a really good job keeping pucks in at the blue line. I think they just outworked us.“

Sharks coach Peter DeBoer

• “We dug deep in the third period. We knew we had a day off tomorrow and it was the end of a long couple of weeks. Guys found a way and I thought our third was excellent considering the circumstances.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com