CANADIENS
Montreal

STARS
Dallas

Game Notes:

No excuses/Pas d’excuses.  Accountability. Michel Therrien has preached it but only selectively applied it. And certainly never towards himself. After the game the coach blamed the loss on two first period penalties by Alexei Emelin and P.K. Subban both drawn by Stars’ forward Ryan Garbutt. But prior to the first penalty at the 11:17 mark, Dallas was already dominating the period with a 5-0 lead in shots. The stark truth is that once again Therrien failed to adequately prepare his team for their opposition. But how could he? The Habs “came to Dallas really late.”

A small but telling point: Sergei Gonchar in his interview during the pre-game warm-ups said that he was not consulted about his former team’s weaknesses to exploit. He simply said, “the coaches did all the talking.” Perhaps the veteran defenceman might have had a few tips for the Canadiens braintrust.

Leak fixed. The Dallas Stars entered the game with four straight losses due to a porous defense, hemorrhaging a league-worst 3.6 goals per game. The cure: face the anemic Canadiens offense. The Habs game plan did not attempt to take advantage of poor gap play by the Stars or the weak defense. Montreal’s first shot on goal in the game was by Manny Malhotra, shorthanded, with only 5:23 left in the first period.

Kill shot. Given the Canadiens success in the third period, it’s reasonable to assume a comeback was possible in the third period if down by two goals. Down 3-0 makes that hurdle that much more insurmountable. With 11 seconds left in the second period, Michel Therrien figured it was a good time to send out David Desharnais for his first defensive zone faceoff of the game. It wasn’t. Desharnais lost the faceoff to Jamie Benn who got the puck to Tyler Seguin in an ideal shooting position. Seguin’s second goal and third point of the game sealed the victory for the Stars.

Discipline. Michel Therrien can place the blame his players for two first period penalties that, in his mind, cost the Canadiens a victory but unwittingly, he was criticizing himself. To a large extent discipline is a coaching issue.  Therrien’s goal this season was to implement a system which would draw more penalties. It has been a miserable failure. The Canadiens are third worst in the league in drawing penalties.  At the same time, the Habs have 119 minors, third worst in the NHL.  Montreal has two players in the top ten in minors, P.K. Subban at fourth and Alexei Emelin at tenth.

Contrast that with a team traditionally thought of as undisciplined.  The Philadelphia Flyers have taken the 10th fewest minors in the league.  The Philadelphia player with the most minors, Wayne Simmonds, is 62nd in the league. Perhaps Therrien could take a lesson from Craig Berube.

Changes. Michel Therrien waited until the third period to make changes to his line combinations. The struggling David Desharnais was finally separated from Max Pacioretty with the Canadiens top scorer placed on a line with Jiri Sekac and centered by Alex Galchenyuk.  Sven Andrighetto, Sekac and Galchenyuk all received power-play time in the third.  It will be interesting to see if the changes will continue going forward.  Following the game, Therrien was less than enthusiastic saying, “We made some line changes in the third (period) to try to shake up things but we cam short again.”

Plus / Minus

▲   Carey Price, Sergei Gonchar

▼   David Desharnais, Manny Malhotra, P.A. Parenteau

1.  Tyler Seguin  DAL
2.  Jamie Benn  DAL
3.  Ryan Garbutt  DAL

• “We took two bad penalties. Took all the momentum away, and we knew that in that situation we were facing tonight in playing a lot of hockey lately. Came to Dallas really late and we had to play a perfect road game and certainly the undisciplined play hurt us tonight.”

P.K. Subban

• “We wanted to generate more offense obviously. I don’t think we generated enough opportunities in front. We got to get the puck to the net. We got to create traffic. We got to get in on our forecheck. We got to make it tough on the defense. We got to make it tougher on the other team. We’re making it too easy for them to come out of their zone right now and into the neutral zone.”

Carey Price

• “They had a lot of jump to start the game. Obviously, we didn’t get off to the start we wanted to. They came at us with everything they had, especially in that first period.”

Sven Andrighetto

• “I was a little nervous at the beginning and it took me a while to put that away and just play my game. I thought I did that in the third period. I tried my best out there. We’ll see where we go from here.”
• “I just cycled the puck with [Tomas] Plekanec and [Jiri] Sekac. Plekanec gave me the puck to the net because he saw an opening and I just put it in.”

Stars coach Lindy Ruff

• “I liked pretty well everything. That’s the way we need to play – a lot of smart decisions, real good puck management. You can win a lot of games playing like that.”
• “It starts by your best players doing the right thing. You’ve got to give those guys the credit. They led the way.”
• “Discipline. [Brandon] Prust was trying to spark his team, and Ryan [Garbutt] did the right thing. He had a great game.”