CANADIENS
Montreal

SENATORS
Ottawa

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Plekanec – Gallagher
Eller – Galchenyuk – Semin
Fleischmann – Desharnais – Weise
Flynn – Mitchell – Smith-Pelly[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov – Subban
Emelin – Petry
Beaulieu – Gilbert[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Condon
Price

Scratches: Greg Pateryn, Jarred Tinordi, Paul Byron
Injured reserve:
Suspended: Zack Kassian

Game Report

To start the season, standing in the way were: Three teams in the Atlantic division. Three bitter rivals. Three road games. And the Canadiens have emerged on the other side with three wins. It hasn’t always been pretty but fans should be happy with the result.

Montreal also opened the season with three road wins in 2014-’15 but this year feels a little different.

With Torrey Mitchell, Brian Flynn and Devante Smith-Pelly, the Habs have a much stronger fourth line. But it’s not the bottom six who are making the biggest difference.

In each of the first three games one player has scored two goals: Max Pacioretty against the Leafs, Lars Eller on Saturday night versus the Bruins and Tomas Plekanec against the Senators. Alex Galchenyuk, Eller and Plekanec each have a game-winning goal.

It bodes well if this offensive balance across the top two lines continues, something missing from a year ago.

It’s fair to say that the Canadiens defense is better than a year ago. That primarily centers on having Jeff Petry right from the start of the year. It can be argued that Petry, along with Andrei Markov have been the two best defenseman in the first three games.

Petry had a good game in his 22:31 against the Senators. With the Canadiens on the power-play Petry turned on the jets to make up for a bad decision by Nathan Beaulieu tracking down the Senators Curtis Lazar and knocking him off the puck to nullify a short-handed chance.

Not unlike last season, P.K. Subban has struggled at times. Last season, his inconsistency lingered for the first third of the schedule.  The expectation is that he will turn things around much sooner in this campaign.

Despite all of the attention in its direction, the power-play is showing signs of being no better than last year. The 1-for-14 efficiency rate doesn’t tell the whole story. A power-play that featured quick puck movement and smart player rotation in the pre-season is once again stuck in a perimeter attack.

It’s hard to pinpoint what is happening but this return to a system that was a failure last year speaks to meddling. Despite the change in the responsibilities of the assistants and bringing in a consultant for advice perhaps someone is stubbornly clinging to their power-play strategy.

Carey Price has been dominant to begin the season. It’s too early to decide whether there has been an upgrade at the backup position but Mike Condon had a nice debut. Condon gave up a soft goal and faced just 12 shots on goal in the first 40 minutes but was effective and calm when the play got a bit scrambly in the third period. To the delight of his teammates, Condon picked up his first NHL victory.

Last season, the three-game winning streak was abruptly halted when the Canadiens were spanked 7-1 by the Tampa Bay Lightning. On Tuesday, Montreal will be in Pittsburgh with the hope of ensuring that the fourth game of the year ends differently.

▲     Tomas Plekanec, Jeff Petry, Torrey Mitchell, Andrei Markov, Tom Gilbert

▼

1.  Lars Eller  MTL
2. Alex Galchenyuk  MTL
3.  Carey Price  MTL

• “[Mike Condon] made some key saves at the right time. This is just something he did through the course of the training camp. He played really well for us. He played well for us in the minors last year. He got the first win and that’s always something special for any player.”
• “He’s calm, but you know what? He’s a battler. You could see at the end the save that he made, he battled really hard on that one.”

Tomas Plekanec

• “I was a little lucky on the first goal. I tried to surprise him a little bit and it worked the way I wanted to.“

Mike Condon

• “It was exciting. I thought the guys played an awesome game. I think we only had 15 shots against (12 shots) going into the third period, only maybe five or six scoring chances. They made my workload very light.”
• “A lot of energy going into the game, but after that first shot comes all the interior monologue just quiets down and all your training takes over. After the first shot, I was just having some fun.”

Senators goalie Matt O’Connor

• “I felt better as the game went on. Obviously I wanted a win. It was a bit of a goalie duel, I guess, with Condon getting his first NHL game as well. I guess we couldn’t really climb back from that first period. I felt comfortable by the end.”
• “I guess there’s some stuff to work on, but overall I felt pretty comfortable, and I felt like I made a good effort.”

Senators coach Dave Cameron

• “We weren’t hard enough on pucks, right through the 12 forwards that were dressed. We talk all the time about if we’re going to establish ourselves as any kind of team that’s tough to play against, you have to go through pucks, not around them. Montreal did a good job of choking us off. If you don’t respond by going through pucks and getting pucks to the net, it’s going to be a long night.”
• “It was a long night tonight.”