CANADIENS
Montreal

HURRICANES
Carolina

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Galchenyuk – Plekanec – Gallagher
Pacioretty – Desharnais – Weise
Fleischmann – Eller – Andrighetto
Flynn – Mitchell – Smith-Pelly[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov- Subban
Emelin – Petry
Barberio – Gilbert[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Scrivens
Condon

Scratches: Greg Pateryn, Nathan Beaulieu
Injured reserve:  Carey Price, Paul Byron, Daniel Carr, Lucas Lessio

Game Report

A weekend of winning at the Bell Centre!  What could be better?

Firstly, the Canadiens got goaltending in the pair of matinees.  Not great, but average goaltending on Saturday and a little better than that on Sunday. Against the Oilers, Ben Scrivens channeled some leftover bitterness for his former team to up his game. The momentum carried over for a first star performance against the Hurricanes.

After being a no-show on Saturday, Max Pacioretty picked up his 20th goal of the season. P.K. Subban and Andrei Markov had the assists.

Lars Eller and his linemates once again had a strong game. There is no doubt that Eller has been the Canadiens best centre for at least the past month. One day, Eller will play for a coach who recognizes his talent and his game will rise a few notches higher.

The Habs won back-to-back games for the first time since November. Montreal now has a 16.5 per cent chance of making the playoffs according to Sports Club Stats. Which means that few are jumping back on the bandwagon.

The power-play didn’t show a lot of life on Sunday. Bell Centre fans were not amused. And the offense didn’t do anything to excite either.

It was left to the under-appreciated Sven Andrighetto to notch his second game-deciding goal of the season which leads the Canadiens.

Two wins over the weekend gives the Habs 56 points which is four back of the New York Islanders with the Isles holding three games in hand. Looking in the other direction, Montreal is nine points up on Edmonton.

Which led some fans to complain that the team can’t even tank the right way.

The fear is that the Canadiens will finish out of the playoffs but above 10-12 teams in the league.  With all of the pain of the current season for fans, a middling first round draft pick wouldn’t seem nearly enough as compensation.

The Tampa Bay Lightning are in Montreal on Tuesday for a matchup at the Bell Centre with the Canadiens.

~~~

▲      Ben Scrivens, Max Pacioretty, Lars Eller, Sven Andrighetto, Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Plekanec, P.K. Subban, Andrei Markov, Tomas Fleischmann

▼      David Desharnais, Mark Barberio

1. Ben Scrivens  MTL
2. Cam Ward  MTL
3. Sven Andrighetto  MTL

• “.”

Sven Andrighetto

• “I went into the shootout confident, and I’m glad it worked. I pretty much take the same route every time, and from there I have different moves I can make. I chose that shot again because he was deep in his net — that’s what I read off the goalie. It was the same thing I did against New Jersey — he gave me the side so I took it.“

Max Pacioretty

• “I think the momentum this weekend started early in the game against Edmonton.[Ben Scrivens] made two huge saves against, I think it was both times on [Jordan] Eberle 1-on-0 in front of the net, and I think that kind of set the tempo for him and for us this weekend. So those four points are big, but a lot of that is because of the way he played.”

Ben Scrivens

• “Obviously it’s nice to get two wins, whether you’re playing or not, but having a bit of ownership definitely makes it sweeter. The biggest thing is that we got the four points that we desperately needed. It’s good for our mentality obviously. We’ve had a lot of games recently where we’re getting 40 shots on net but coming up kind of empty-handed losing close games. To have that big game [against the Oilers] where we were finally getting some good bounces, and following that up with a close win today is hopefully a good step forward for us.“

P.K. Subban

• “[Saturday], we were pretty much lights-out. I thought we played pretty consistent throughout 60 minutes from top to bottom. I think today, the first period, we were turning pucks over and we weren’t playing the game we wanted to play.”

Hurricanes captain Eric Staal

• “We had a lot of good looks. We like the way we playing for the most part through the first, second, the third was pretty even both ways, but we had a lot of great chances, the power play, obviously, some really good looks that you want to see them fall, but right now they’re not, especially for me. It’s been tough trying to scrape some confidence. I’m going to need one off my behind or something, and then go from there, but we’ll take the point and we’ll be ready next game.”

Hurricanes coach Bill Peters

• “[Cam Ward] was excellent. Both goaltenders were very good, made some big saves, and both goaltenders were very good in the shootout also.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com