CANADIENS
Montreal

CANUCKS
Vancouver

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Desharnais – Shaw
Radulov – Galchenyuk – Gallagher
Lehkonen – Plekanec – Byron
Danault – Mitchell – Flynn[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Emelin – Weber
Markov – Petry
Beaulieu – Pateryn
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Montoya

Scratches

none

Injured Reserve

Zach Redmond

Game Report

In the last game report, we were lamenting about the increasing reliance on Carey Price. Against the Maple Leafs on Saturday, Price made 37 saves enroute to a 2-1 win.

Tonight, the win would require 42 saves by Price.

The Canucks came into this game as a team that could not generate shots. They were averaging just 1.78 goals per game in their first nine.  Yet against the flat Canadiens, they suddenly found their offense and steamrolled the home team.

Shots on goal were 13-3 for Vancouver in the first period. By the seventh minute of the second period, the Canucks had a 24-3 shot advantage. Yet, taking advantage of their speed and a fragile Vancouver team, the Habs took a 2-0 lead to the second period intermission.

The third period was somewhat more even with Canadiens taking advantage of the visitors pressing to score. An empty net goal later and Montreal had its ninth victory in 10 games.

The term cap-friendly contract is tossed around rather freely these days. Price’s $6.5 million per year deal is more than friendly, it is the best bargain in sports. Right now, there is no other player who is as dominant in hockey as Price. There’s no one who can single-handedly change the outcome of a game like he can.

This team continues to win. But the last three ‘W’s came with Carey Price as the first star. The Canadiens are not playing the same type of hockey they did to begin the year. Price is once again covering a load of mistakes.

First and foremost in the list of mistakes is coaching. Since Michel Therrien went back to his ‘happy place’ reuniting David Desharnais with Max Pacioretty, the trio has been silent. Desharnais has no points, no shots, no nothing and is hovering just around 30 per cent in faceoff effectiveness, all this while gobbling up first line ice time and power-play shifts.

The GM can relish in the historic start all he wishes, but as a hockey man, he should realize that the Canadiens are not playing to their potential. And once again relying solely on their goaltender to come up with a win won’t take this team very far at the most important time of the year.

~~~

▲     Carey Price, Shea Weber, Brendan Gallagher, Alex Galchenyuk

▼     David Desharnais, Andrew Shaw

1. Carey Price  MTL
2. Torrey Mitchell  MTL
3. Loui Eriksson  VAN

• “We’re off to a good start, but we have to continue to perform and play solid hockey.”

Max Pacioretty

• “You take it, you move on and you try to get better. We’ve been talking for a couple of days now about wanting to get better – and until the end of the game, for the most part, it was a poor effort and very, very poor execution. We have to play much, much better than that.”

Nathan Beaulieu

• “Pricey was obviously Pricey, which is awesome. But, we definitely got away with one. We just weren’t sharp. It’s going to happen over the course of the year. It was definitely a wake-up call. I guess it’s the best kind of wake-up call to get. We ended up getting the W. It was a tough game for us. We were good in the third, but other than that, we relied on Carey the whole night.”

Torrey Mitchell

• “The first half of the game was tough for us. We couldn’t even touch the puck. If it weren’t for Price we would have gone down 3-0 or even 4-0.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com