CANADIENS
Montreal

RED WINGS
Detroit

Game Notes:

Bubble effect.  Call it what you will, a wave or a bubble, but the Canadiens are riding a six-game win streak sitting atop the NHL standings. Some may argue that the numbers don’t support the continuation of their winning ways.  The Canadiens certainly benefited from getting fortunate bounces on three of their four goals against the Red Wings. And the highlight of them all was Brendan Gallagher scoring on one knee from behind the net. But, as P.K. Subban said post-game, “the bounces we’re getting are because we’re working hard and doing the things we need to do to get to the front of the net.”

Team defense. There’s little debate that the Canadiens’ early success is attributable to the work of Carey Price. But the team proved on Sunday that they can win with backup Dustin Tokarski getting a rare start.  To be fair, Tokarski could have snoozed through the first two periods as the Canadiens only allowed 10 shots on goal in the first 40 minutes. But Tokarski was called upon to make a few big saves in the third period.

Penalty kill. Discipline, often a reflection of coaching, has been a major problem in Montreal all season. The Canadiens currently have taken 91 minor penalties which is the second-most in the league. Yet the penalty-kill remains in the top-10 in terms of efficiency. Mike Weaver, Tomas Plekanec, Lars Eller, Andrei Markov and Max Pacioretty had an unblemished record on the PK on Sunday with Eller leading the team in faceoff percentage at 67 per cent.

Starting a turn around? Only the most overzealous Subban cheerleaders would disagree that P.K. Subban has been a major disappointment so far this season. Whether feeling the pressure of his lucrative contract or trying too hard to do things individually, his play has been underwhelming at both ends of the ice. While Subban was on the ice for the Red Wings goal, he assisted on Brandon Prust’s second period goal and scored one of his own. He played a team-high 26:08.

Plus / Minus

▲   Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Plekanec, P.K. Subban, Alex Galchenyuk, Andrei Markov, Max Pacioretty, Brandon Prust, Alexei Emelin

▼   David Desharnais, Sergei Gonchar, Manny Malhotra

1.  Dustin Tokarski  MTL 
2.  P.K. Subban  MTL
3.  Danny DeKeyser  DET

• “We were playing our fourth game in six days, back-to-back and playing a Detroit Red Wings team that’s a good team that plays with good structure.  We could have had a lot of excuses but the guys didn’t take any excuses.”
• “[Brendan Gallagher’s] work ethic is always 100 percent. Tonight he got rewarded.”

Brandon Prust

• “Everyone’s buying in and everyone’s doing their job. We’re not trying to do too much. We’re sticking to our strengths. We’re sticking to the game plan and it’s working. We’re not a team full of superstars. We’re just a lot of grit and guys that are working their butts off. We just wanted to lay it all out on the line against Detroit, and make sure that we came to battle. We didn’t want to come in here and use the back-to-back as an excuse. We did a good job of it.”

P.K. Subban

• “Before the game, we spoke about all the excuses that, maybe, we could use to not come out strong. We wanted to come out without any excuses tonight. We wanted to put forth our best effort.”
• “The bounces we’re getting are because we’re working hard and doing the things we need to do to get to the front of the net. There’s real estate around the net, and you’ve got to fight for it. I think we’re doing a good job of that right now. We’ve got to keep it up.”

Red Wings coach Mike Babcock

• “I thought we didn’t have much jump and much energy, for whatever reason. We scheduled a day off yesterday because we had to, we travel so much this month couldn’t get enough [off] days. We knew going in we didn’t want to do that but that’s the way it goes. But we should have competed and skated better than we did tonight