CANADIENS
Montreal

JETS
Winnipeg

Game Notes:

Hart.  Trophies aren’t awarded in November but there’s no doubt that no player has been more important to their team than Carey Price.  As the head coach tinkers with systems and Habs top players underperform, Price just wins.  Early on in this game Nathan Beaulieu, in one of his many misadventures, handed the puck to Dustin Byfuglien. Price made the save on the breakaway. How about a 2-on-0 by Blake Wheeler and Evander Kane. Price made the save. The Canadiens goaltender is masking a plethora of mistakes and is responsible for the winning record. He has been brilliant.

Silencing the haters. Lars Eller has been Michel Therrien‘s whipping boy since he was lounging on an RDS sofa. As pointed out in the intermission interview, no one has had to put up with a carousel of linemates more than Eller. And mostly slugs. His line rarely starts in the offensive zone and receives no power-play time. Eller scored his fourth goal of the season, three of them have been game-winners (leads the team.) Eller’s ice-time crept up against the Jets. Are offensive zone starts and power-play time coming next? It’s warranted but don’t count on it under this regime who loves to play its favorites, performing or not.

Plan B. Michel Therrien and his coaching staff devised a new system over the summer that was supposed to create more turnovers. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. That system was shelved prior to the Buffalo game according the coach deciding to go back to a more defensive scheme.  The result has been three straight wins.  There are still transition pains, however, as the speedy Jets had long periods of possession in the Canadiens zone. But Therrien has the luxury of the Hart candidate to address that issue.

The wing is just fine. The scuttlebutt during training camp was all about ensuring that Alex Galchenyuk would play centre. However with the Canadiens GM questioning Galchenyuk’s instinct at his natural position, he will play the wing for now. And on a line with Tomas Plekanec and Brendan Gallagher, it’s working. Galchenyuk scored the second goal of the game, Plekanec had six shots on goal and Gallagher was his pesky self.

Power-play woes. The Canadiens power-play is dismal, going scoreless again on Tuesday night. And GM Marc Bergevin just bought a $5 million smokescreen. P.K. Subban and Andrei Markov are two of the best power-play point men in the league and are capable of playing the majority of the two-minute advantage.  With the man advantage, there is a frustrating pattern: David Desharnais loses the draw (a dismal 38 per cent against the Jets), the Habs are forced to chase the puck, they struggle with their zone entry, the first wave fails to establish a net presence, they offer no down-low threat, penalty-killers cover the points, two minute advantage expires. Sergei Gonchar won’t address any of those issues.

Plus / Minus

▲   Carey Price, Lars Eller, Jiri Sekac, Tom Gilbert, Alex Galchenyuk, Tomas Plekanec, Manny Malhotra

▼   David Desharnais, P.K. Subban, Nathan Beaulieu

1.  Carey Price  MTL 
2.  Alex Galchenyuk MTL
3.  Ondrej Pavelec  WPG

• On trading Travis Moen: “First of all, we let go a good leader, a good person, a guy that never complained, was always there for his teammates, always accepting his role.”

Lars Eller

• “We’re putting a lot of passes together, but most of the time that’s going to be the goals. It’s going to be driving the net and rebounds. Jiri had a good drive to the net there, you know, created space for me, and I picked up the rebound. A lot of times it’s as simple as that.”

Tomas Plekanec

• “Pricey was spectacular again for us, as usual. It wasn’t a perfect game for us. We had some problems executing our plays but at the end of the day we managed to score three goals so that’s a good sign. We talked about the fact that good offense comes from good defense. I thought we did a better job doing that and Pricey did a good job of taking care of anything we didn’t do well.”

Manny Malhotra

• Every night, [Carey Price] is just unreal. It gives a team a lot of confidence when you know your goalie can make those types of saves. Obviously we don’t want to have to make him make those 10-bell saves every night, but knowing that he has the ability and he believes in himself every night that he can stop every puck, it makes us play a lot bigger.”

Mike Weaver

• “Carey is there for every single key save. I mean, I can’t score on him in practice, so that really hurts my self-esteem but he’s able to stop the best goal scorers out there.”

Jets coach Paul Maurice

• “We didn’t get enough pucks to the net early, and I don’t mean [early] in the game. I mean early in our chances, early in our decisions to get it to the net. We passed off probably too much and then it got knocked down or blocked.”