CANADIENS
Montreal

SABRES
Buffalo

Game Notes:

Behind the curtain.  A win is a win. With two points in the bank and the team plane returning to Montreal this game is already in the rear-view mirror. But it shouldn’t be.  The Canadiens have been very good winning close contests this season with one third of their wins coming via the shootout.  But this win and their record are masking some fundamental problems that, due to the team’s success, are showing little improvement or even evidence of being addressed.

In context. The Sabres are a bad hockey team, sitting dead last in the league.  They give up 36.3 shots per game, the most in the league, and average 21.7 per game, the fewest in the NHL.  Yet after 40 minutes tonight, Buffalo had a 19-15 shot advantage.  The Sabres score just over one goal per game on average so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they struggled to score tonight. But Buffalo gives up 3.5 goals per game yet the Canadiens couldn’t generate any offense. Coming into the game, the Sabres had a pathetic 2.4 percent success rate on the power-play so naturally they scored with the man advantage. Buffalo is bad but the Habs played right at their level and were fortunate to come away with the win.

Fantasy hockey. Fans got their wishes on Wednesday night.  They have been calling for Jiri Sekac and Michael Bournival to be in the lineup. Both were there with Travis Moen and Rene Bourque being healthy scratches.. another fan request checked off the list.  And to finish off the lineup that could have been chosen by Twitter, Jarred Tinordi and Nathan Beaulieu played with Mike Weaver sidelined with the flu.  And the result of the ultimate fan choices? The Canadiens could not generate any offense looking in disarray and were dreadful in their own zone. As mentioned several times, tweaks to bottom six forwards and bottom pairing defencemen will not solve the problems plaguing the team.  Until the top line players play better or their workload is reassigned the Habs ship will remain stalled.

Good to see a friend. Habs fans can’t help but feel good about seeing former players Josh Gorges and Brian Gionta. Gorges played more than 25 minutes on the top defensive pairing spending time on the power-play and penalty-kill. Gionta played almost 21 minutes and scored against Tokarski in the shootout.

Plus / Minus

▲   Max Pacioretty, P.A. Parenteau

▼   David Desharnais

1.  P.A. Parenteau  MTL 
2.  Michal Neuvirth  BUF
3.  Dustin Tokarski  MTL

• “I really liked the way we played tonight. We had a lot of quality chances even if we didn’t capitalize on all of them. We got back to basics and played tight hockey which created a lot of scoring opportunities. I liked the work a lot of our guys put in tonight while playing their second game in 48 hours. It was nice to see.”
• “There wasn’t a lot I didn’t like about our team tonight. I thought they played a solid game.”

P.A. Parenteau

• “Let’s face it, we needed it. After those two performances we had on our home ice, any kind of win was going to be good tonight.”

Dustin Tokarski

• “We’ve got a lot of character on this team. A tied game on the road, [we] came out and got a quick one there and unfortunately they got one too. We stuck to it and got a couple big ones in the shootout.”

Sabres coach Ted Nolan

• “We battled back, we got the goal. The one thing about shootouts, those things are skill competitions, and sometimes you win them, sometimes you don’t. But the effort tonight I thought was really good.”