CANADIENS
Montreal

WILD
Minnesota

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Danault – Radulov
Lehkonen – Plekanec – Byron
Flynn – Mitchell – Andrighetto
Carr – McCarron – Terry
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Emelin – Weber
Beaulieu – Petry
Barberio – Redmond
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Montoya

Scratches

Bobby Farnham, Nikita Scherbak, Ryan Johnston

Injured Reserve

Alex Galchenyuk (knee), David Desharnais (knee), Greg Pateryn (ankle), Andrew Shaw (concussion), Andrei Markov (lower body)

Game Report

If you arrived here salivating for commentary bashing Carey Price, you’re in the wrong place. You are probably looking for a tabloid blog or that radio station who likes to create drama by screening for the most ill-informed callers. Or perhaps, those are the only folks who listen.

If the Canadiens had played a solid game and Price had given up seven softies, then there would be reason to worry and reason to criticize Price’s play. But that’s not what happened.

In fact, not one of the goals allowed could be considered soft. Here are the types of goals that the Wild scored tonight: re-directions, perfect shots (yes, those happen), power-play goals (the Canadiens penalty-kill is 23rd in the league) and anytime Nathan Beaulieu was on the ice.

Beaulieu may be the Canadiens worst defenceman right now in his own zone. He has always been poor at reading the opposition as plays develop. Right now, with injuries forcing him onto the second pairing, Beaulieu is completely lost. Andrei Markov can’t return soon enough.

After Wednesday night’s game in Winnipeg, I wrote, “The Canadiens will have to be better, much better in all areas of the ice when they play the Wild on Thursday night.” They weren’t. 

In fact, despite winning two, Montreal has not played a good game in their last four. The only way they were able to win against Toronto and Winnipeg was shoddy goaltending by the opposition. The Wild is not Winnipeg. And the Leafs are not the Capitals.

And yet some will drone on about Price being a new father, his body language or being mentally elsewhere. Amateur social workers now? It gets even worse when they try to critique his technical play: going down too early, slow lateral movement. Please stop, you are all embarrassing yourselves.

Carey Price is not the problem and should definitely not be the focus. But this team does have serious issues.

Take a break from examining the psyche of the best goaltender in the world to consider the collapse of the defensive corps beyond Shea Weber and Alexei Emelin. Or how about the lack of depth down the middle that has a fourth liner centering the top trio despite being a huge defensive liability? Should a contending team have a penalty-kill that is in the bottom third of the league?

Even the casual fan should be able to realize that any of those factors (and there are more) have a far more negative impact on the success of this team than any wildly concocted nonsense about Price.

~~~

▲     Artturi Lehkonen, Sven Andrighetto

▼     Nathan Beaulieu, Jeff Petry, Brian Flynn

1.  Eric Staal  MIN
2.  Jared Spurgeon  MIN
3.  Devan Dubnyk  MIN

• “Carey wanted to stay there [after the second period] and I respected the decision, and even more I think I appreciate the fact that you want to stay there. It’s one of those nights where it’s a tough night and we’re all in this together and we’re all suffering as a team. Pretty simple.”

Carey Price

• “I’d rather just stick it out. Nobody else has the opportunity to get pulled in the game, so I’d rather just stick it out with everyone else.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com