CANADIENS
Montreal

FLAMES
Calgary

Game Notes:

A team built on speed. That’s the MO of the Canadiens, right? Coach Michel Therrien has installed a new system this season that is supposed to take advantage of Montreal’s speed and is designed to create opposition turnovers. Well, not when they face Calgary. The Flames used their superior speed and heavy forecheck to possess the puck and force giveaways.  The Habs were left to the chase game. The visitors vastly outworked their hosts.

Accountability for Mr T. It’s the coach who preaches accountability and never accepts any. A dozen games into the season and it’s fair to say that the coach’s new system is a dismal failure.  Carey Price has been primarily responsible for the Canadiens good start. Michel Therrien owns the fact that his team has been unprepared from the start of each game along with his inability to implement a system to enhance puck possession.

Penalties. While discipline is an obvious issue with the Canadiens sitting atop the league in minor penalties, they haven’t been very good at enticing the opposition. Montreal is last in the league drawing penalties at home with only nine power-play opportunities in five games. The Penguins lead the league with 32 chances. Once again, this is an indictment of the Therrien-system which he advocated would do the opposite.

Changes. While there is an understandable outcry for change among the fanbase, swapping deck chairs is not going to have the necessary effect.  It is time that Jiri Sekac draws back into the lineup. He has been struggling to get used to the speed of the NHL game but he is not going to learn sitting in the press box.  On the other hand for an offense-starved team there is not much to be gained by inserting Michael Bournival. He and Travis Moen had similar offensive numbers last season.  More fundamental change to the system and power-play is required.

‘First’ line. Some maintain that David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty are inseparable. Would it surprise you to learn that Dale Weise has the primary assist on three of Pacioretty’s five goals? So Desharnais is not the playmaker he is made out to be and with one just goal, Desharnais is ahead of only Manny Malhotra in terms of scoring by Habs centres — Plekanec, Eller and Galchenyuk each has more. And Desharnais’ poor performance (going back to last year’s playoffs) is despite his pampered treatment: best linemates, significant ice-time and top power-play time, highest offensive zone starts, and low quality of competition.

Plus / Minus

▲   Carey Price, Dale Weise

▼   Max Pacioretty, David Desharnais, P.A. Parenteau, P.K. Subban. Nathan Beaulieu

1.  Josh Jooris  CGY 
2.  Johnny Gaudreau  CGY
3.  T.J. Brodie  CGY

• “It’s tough to explain (why we didn’t have a good start.) If you’re not ready to compete in this league, you’ve got no chance. We didn’t compete.”
• “It was a tough game for our team and for a lot of players. It’s tough to accept. We need better starts. We need to find ways to get the lead, especially at home. There are no excuses. Individual preparation has a lot to do with it. We’ve always been a team that takes pride in having good starts. We’re not seeing that right now.”

Tomas Plekanec

• “We’re making it hard on ourselves with those starts. Obviously when you score first, that’s a different story. You have more confidence to play. If you’ve got to chase the score all the time, then it’s not going to happen all the time that you’re going to turn it around.”

Max Pacioretty

• “We have to find a way to come out, get off to a good start and outbattle a team like that. We just weren’t able to do it. They outplayed us the whole game. Maybe there are bits and pieces where we liked our game, but we didn’t put anything significant together. Obviously, the start is important and we keep talking about it, but it ultimately comes down to intensity. That’s the final reason why we lost.”

P.K. Subban

• “They’re a good team. We knew that they play with that intensity and that passion in terms of their forecheck and how they play their system, so if you don’t counter that, if you’re not playing smart with the puck, they’re going to hurt you and they did that to us a couple of times tonight.”

Andrei Markov

• “Some penalties put us a little bit down. We have to be better with the penalties. Our special teams have to better, and definitely we have to play much harder with emotion and the way we know we can play. We have to regroup and play better next game.”
• “There’s wasn’t much in the way of positives. The way we played is unacceptable. We try to forget those types of games and move forward. That was a tough night.”

Flames forward Johnny Gaudreau

• “I think we’re all just doing the little things right and we’re all doing our jobs, you know, making little plays, creating offensive chances and playing well in our defensive zone and helping [Hiller] back there.”