CANADIENS
Montreal

5-2

DUCKS
Anaheim

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Byron – Hudon
Galchenyuk – Drouin – Scherbak
Lehkonen – Plekanec – Gallagher
Deslauriers – Froese – L. Shaw
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Alzner – Petry
Mete – Schlemko
Morrow – Benn
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Niemi
Price

Scratches

Jacob De La Rose, Daniel Carr, Jakub Jerabek

Injuries

Ales Hemsky – concussion, Shea Weber – lower-body, Phillip Danault – concussion, Andrew Shaw – lower-body

Game Report 

Blame it on the ‘D’!. We have heard that phrase a lot this season from Canadiens fans. Today, there’s no doubt that you can accurately lay the win at the feet of the Canadiens defence.

Four of Montreal’s five goals came from blueliners in this matinee at the Bell Centre. The Habs defence stepped up, with two goals from Jeff Petry, a Joe Morrow blast and David Schlemko’s first as a Canadien. Sitting near the bottom of the league all season in offensive contributions from the back end, this was a welcome surprise.

It was also a banner day for the Habs power-play with a 43 percent success rate. The Ducks have a middle-of-the-road penalty-kill but let’s not take anything anyway from Montreal with the man advantage. Given the difficulty scoring goals at any strength, today’s output should help their confidence.

A nice story was Logan Shaw picking up his first goal in a Montreal jersey against his former team. More good news came in the person of recently recalled Nikita Scherbak. Not only did Scherbak notch his first NHL assist, he looked very dangerous in his paltry 10:41 of icetime.

If there was a negative in the on-ice performance, it was the Habs sitting on a lead in the third period. Ducks coach Randy Carlyle lamented that his team did not take advantage of the Canadiens saying, “The most disappointing part for me was our inability to mount more of a comeback. And they just sat back in the third and we played into their hands. We just allowed them to retrieve pucks ahead of us and we got frustrated.”

===

▲  Alex Galchenyuk, Jeff Petry, Antti Niemi, Nikita Scherbak

▼  Claude Julien

1. Antti Niemi  MTL
2. Jeff Petry  MTL
3. Alex Galchenyuk  MTL

• “I think (Anaheim) came out ready to play, and they did have the puck for the first five minutes and they did have nine shots. And at the same time, we just needed to get the puck on our stick and start managing it. And when we did, we scored some goals.”

Jeff Petry

• “We knew that they were going to come out and play a heavy game and I don’t think we were as sharp early on. As the game went on, we got better.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com

Jonathan Drouin on his way to the hospital for precautionary reason. Hit by a puck in the back in the second period. He won't return.

— Renaud Lavoie (@renlavoietva) February 3, 2018

Scherbak making an immediate impact on the #Habs roster today, with an assist on Morrow's goal. @AllHabs @TheAHLReport @RocketSports #GoRocket #GoHabsGo

— Amy Johnson (@FlyersRule) February 3, 2018

Miller is chased. Berra is in the Anaheim net. #GoHabsGo

— All Habs (@AllHabs) February 3, 2018

Follow @AllHabs on Twitter