CANADIENS
Montreal

ISLANDERS
New York

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

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

[one_half_last]Markov – Subban
Emelin – Petry
Beaulieu – Gilbert[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Condon
Tokarski

Scratches: Jarred Tinordi, Alex Semin
Injured reserve:  Carey Price
Suspended: Zack Kassian

Game Report

It was a chess game of sorts. Both teams proceeded cautiously through 45 minutes resulting in a very tightly-played hockey game.

Dale Weise continued his hot streak scoring a power-play goal for his eighth of the season late in the first. Kyle Okposo evened things up early in the second on a goal that Mike Condon would like to have back.

But in just over a minute-and-a-half in the third period the Canadiens took control scoring twice, first taking advantage of a fortunate bounce off a linesman.

Montreal limited the Islanders to just 18 shots on goal. After his initial error, Condon outplayed Jaroslav Halak. The line of David Desharnais, Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann were opportunistic picking up the winning goal but were on the wrong side of shot attempts relying on Condon to bail them out.

Tomas Plekanec, Max Pacioretty and Brendan Gallagher each had two points. The first two lines dominated possession.

Paul Byron and Alex Galchenyuk were held without a shot on goal. But for the coach’s stubbornness, Alex Semin deserves to be back in the lineup. The second line was more effective prior to Michel Therrien’s tinkering — Brian Flynn, Devante Smith-Pelly and Byron have not been the answer.

The Boston Bruins will be in town on Saturday night to meet the Canadiens.

▲     Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Plekanec, Max Pacioretty, Jeff Petry, P.K. Subban, Mike Condon

▼

1. David Desharnais   MTL
2. Dale Weise  MTL
3. Jeff Petry  MTL

• “We play the right way and this is the reason we got success.”
• “We like what we see from the special teams. Our power play is going good and our penalty kill is good as well.”

Dale Weise

• “When you’re doing the right things, good things happen, so we’ll take those any day of the week. Hometown bounce, I’m sure the linesman felt a little unfortunate there, but we’ll take it. A great play by [Fleischmann] to capitalize on it.“

Jeff Petry

• “We knew it was going to be a tight game. That’s a team that plays their system well and we knew it was going to be a tight game and we didn’t veer off from our style of play. At 1-1, we didn’t change our style. It’s something we said in between periods; we just needed to continue working and we knew we were going to get our chances.”

Brendan Gallagher

• “That’s been the strength of our team all year, the way we roll four lines. We’re able to come after teams line after line and play the right way and wear them down. We have a lot of good hockey players and a lot of guys who understand how to contribute to a team’s success.“
• “We like the makeup of our group, we like coming to the rink and working together and we like seeing each other have success.  It’s fun to be at the rink right now and it’s fun to be a part of this team. Hopefully we can keep it going.”

Islanders captain John Tavares

• “I felt really good. I’m just disappointed I didn’t capitalize on some of my chances. I thought I had a lot of good looks and had some good jump tonight. I have to find a way to put them in.”

Islanders coach Jack Capuano

• “He came over; there’s nothing he can do. The thing is the puck was either going to be iced or it was going to go 200 feet down. Unfortunately it hit him and it resulted in a 2-on-1 with two pretty good players and it’s in the back of our net. There’s nothing you can do about it. They’re a pretty good team, they don’t give up much. I figured going in it would be one of those games because we’ve played pretty well defensively too of late, and it came down to that.“

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com