CANADIENS
Montreal

STARS
Dallas

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Drouin – Galchenyuk
Byron – Danault – Shaw
Hudon – Plekanec – Gallagher 
Deslauriers – De La Rose – Mitchell
[/one_half]

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

Goaltenders

Lindgren
Niemi

Scratches

Byron Froese

Injuries

David Schlemko – hand, Ales Hemsky – concussion, Nikita Scherbak – knee,  Carey Price – lower-body, Al Montoya – concussion, Artturi Lehkonen – lower-body, Shea Weber – lower-body

Game Report

It seems like such a little thing, just a momentary lapse. 

After the game, the Canadiens head coach offered an optimistic spin, saying, “If you take that minute away, maybe we win a 1-0 game.” Was Claude Julien trying to convince reporters or himself? The analysis isn’t that simple and Julien knows it (we hope).

You see it is the little things that good teams routinely do. And that’s usually because a good coach has impressed on his team to pay attention to small details.

Ken Hitchcock is a very good coach. And we saw when the Canadiens turned up the pressure in the third period that Dallas defenders did all the little things right to get sticks and bodies in the way, frustrating Habs shooters.

In watching video, Hitchcock learned that putting pressure on Canadiens players in their own zone caused them to run around opening up both passing lanes and access to rebounds. After almost every loss recently, Max Pacioretty speaks about defensive coverage mistakes.

Hitchcock was right. Andrew Shaw and Phillip Danault allowed a cross-ice pass from John Klingberg to Devin Shore for the Stars’ first goal. On Jason Spezza’s game-winner, Jonathan Drouin was in no man’s land looking for someone to cover.

What is it about this Julien coverage scheme that has his players regularly flummoxed? 

In goal, Charlie Lindgren continues to do all he can to keep his team close. Lindgren had another strong game against Dallas. But the Canadiens are not providing goal support with just eight goals scored in the past six games.

Jonathan Drouin has scored just one goal in the past 15 games. The Canadiens so-called number one centre had no shots on goal against Dallas, was a minus-2 and was a pathetic 20 per cent at the faceoff dot. 

On the other side of the ice, Alexander Radulov is having a great season with seven goals, 13 assists for 20 points in 21 games. And his rare kind of energy has infected his linemates in green. The points and dynamic play are certainly missing from the top trio of the Canadiens.

It’s a short turnaround for the Canadiens as they head to Nashville for a Wednesday night game against the Predators.

~~~

▲     Tomas Plekanec, Brendan Gallagher, Charles Hudon

▼     Joe Morrow, Jonathan Drouin, Phillip Danault, Jordie Benn, Brandon Davidson, Victor Mete, Andrew Shaw

1. Devin Shore  DAL
2. Ben Bishop  DAL
3. Jason Spezza  DAL

• “If you take that minute away, maybe we win a 1-0 game. We played well tonight. It was a good game besides that minute.”
• “When you get scored on, the biggest thing you gotta do is push back. Right now it’s not happening, so we gotta keep working on that.”

Max Pacioretty

• “We gave up too many grade A [scoring chances]. If we were able to put one in when we had the chances earlier in the game, it might be a different story. Eventually, that team is going to make you pay. They just have so much offense that’s able to come wave after wave. When they were able to get that first one, they built off that. We weren’t able to recover.”

Charlie Lindgren

• “Once a team scores, they’re going to have momentum. We’ve just got to find a way to stop that momentum. It’s tough, they had two goals in 59 seconds, and that was the game tonight. I thought I played well. I thought I gave the team a chance to win, but at the end of the day it’s a loss […] so now we’ve got to turn that around.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com