CANADIENS
Montreal

JETS
Winnipeg

Game Report

So the Canadiens got out-Price’d and the Emelin – Petry combo were awful. If you are satisfied with that narrative then no need to read any further.  But if you care about the truth, read on.

First of all, Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec played very well, and he is on a roll.  This is the same Pavelec who was the target of criticism by the Jets fanbase for most of this year — last season Winnipeg fans wanted him shipped out.  The talk of the town was Michael Hutchinson, the rookie, who despite a shaky training camp, beat former Canadien Peter Budaj out of the backup gig.  As recently as two weeks ago, Hutchinson had started seven consecutive games.

Since then, Pavelec has six straight wins.  Against the Canadiens, the Czech goaltender made 20 saves, in the first period.  He was great, not Price-great, but enough to turn away the pop-gun offense of the Montreal Canadiens.  The Habs fired from everywhere in the first period except from the prime scoring area. Long-live the perimeter game of Michel Therrien.

Credit to the Jets defense who are big, physical and mobile.  But the Canadiens will be facing other teams just like that in the playoffs and have to find a way of getting to the net.  Digging the puck and driving to the net is exactly the type of game played by Lars Eller, Jacob de la Rose and Dale Weise. So in his wisdom, Therrien gave Eller a whopping 10:33 in ice-time.

Yet inexplicably, playing one of his worst games of the season (and there have been many) was David Desharnais and his 19:43 of icetime.  The Jets second goal was a DD trifecta: doing a fly-by on the puck carrier, crashing into Jeff Petry and causing a giveaway.  Later with the puck in the Jets zone, the camera switched to a view from the corner right over Desharnais’ shoulder who had his butt stapled to the corner boards for a perfect spectator view of Pacioretty battling alone in the crease.  Still wondering why the Habs can’t produce?

And Desharnais had 3:51 on the man advantage.  The Canadiens power-play went 0-for-4, again!

The Achilles heel of the Jets is that they take a lot of penalties, at 353 minutes, the most minors in the league. Yet they had an easy time fending off the feckless Montreal power-play.

It is games like this one that remind everyone around the league that the Hart Trophy for Carey Price is a slam dunk.  The Caanadiens are simply an average team without him with an offense that can’t overcome their goalie giving up a bad goal.  And most certainly can’t give up three bad goals.

Dustin Tokarski was awful giving up three softies on the Jets first, third and fourth goals.  Having said that it could have been worse.  Beyond the goals, Tokarski had a hard time tracking the puck, was out of position and was giving up big rebounds.  Starting him was the right decision but Tokarski has to play better.  His record for 2015 is 2-4-2 with an .899 save percentage.

The three bad goals skewed the plus-minus stats causing Habs fans to howl about the combined minus-8 of the Jeff Petry – Alexei Emelin duo.  But looking at the goals, the defensemen were doing their jobs.  You can chalk up two of the minus-4 for each defenseman to poor netminding.

Add in the Desharnais debacle on the second goal and P.A. Parenteau failing to pick up his check on the Jets fifth goal and you have accounted for the bad stat, without either defenseman being at fault.  In addition, against a very physical Jets team, Emelin was one of two Canadiens defenceman hitting back.  Emelin led the team with six hits, Greg Pateryn had four.

▲     Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Plekanec, Andrei Markov

▼     Dustin Tokarski, Torrey Mitchell, Devante Smith-Pelly, Dale Weise, David Desharnais

1.  Ondrej Pavelec  WPG
2.  Mark Scheifele  WPG
3.  Jim Slater  WPG

• “[Ondrej Pavelec] was outstanding. He was the difference in the game.”
• “I thought we were really solid. We were ready to play. We dictated the game. We dictated the pace. Pavelec was outstanding, and they capitalized on their chances. Honestly, I’ve got to look at the way we played, and we played a really solid game.”
• “You can’t just look at the final score, though. That’s a mistake. The guys competed and that’s what I think is important. We showed a lot of character. We were ready. We knew we had a big challenge ahead of us, and I think the guys worked really hard.”

Brendan Gallagher

• “It wasn’t like we were discouraged or anything. We knew that we were playing a team that was going to work hard and make it tough in front. We were able to create some scoring chances, but there’s a difference between creating them and putting them in.”
• “We’ve got to bear down, myself included, and make sure that we put those scoring chances in early on. It changes the course of the game. We liked the effort. We liked everything that led to it, but we’ve just got to do a better job bearing down.”
• “You can tell that their mindset every night is that they just want to use their speed, forecheck and play physical hockey. They did that against us. We expected that.”

Dustin Tokarski

• “You guys saw it. It’s a pretty epic performance by [Ondrej Pavelec]. We played a good game. I’d have liked to make a few more saves out there, but sometimes that’s the way it goes.”

Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec

• “Of course it wasn’t the first period that we wanted, but we survived. We scored the first goal. That was huge for us, and every period we got better and better. We found a way to beat one of the best teams in the [League] right now, so we should be feel pretty good about ourselves.”

Jets coach Paul Maurice

• “We survived tonight. You’re going to have to try to do that at this time of year.”
• “It felt like we were behind it the entire [first] period, and our goaltender was the best player on the ice for both teams, and we needed him to be to survive it.”
• “I think we knew that we weren’t really good in the first period, but we also thought we could get better. There were some things we could do just to simplify. Sometimes you just got to accept where you’re at and not look for perfect and find a way just to get a little bit better. I thought we did a good job of that.”