CANADIENS
Montreal

KINGS
Los Angeles

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Byron – Galchenyuk – Radulov
Andrighetto – Plekanec – Gallagher
Pacioretty – Danault – Shaw
Carr – Mitchell – Flynn[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Emelin – Weber
Markov – Petry
Beaulieu – Hanley
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Montoya

Scratches

Greg Pateryn, David Desharnais

Injured Reserve

Zach Redmond, Artturi Lehkonen

Game Report

Carey Price. 

Outstanding, amazing and yes, spectacular. Price’s save on Anze Kopitar will be on all of the highlight reels. But there were more. Lots more.

But in this game, Price faced a manageable shot load. The Canadiens were still outshot in this game but allowed just 24.

And something else happened. Price was again the best player on the ice, but on this night he had company. The Canadiens played their most complete game of the season.

The Kings got most of their scoring chances while on the power-play. And their single goal. When play was 5-on-5, Montreal was simply dominant. It’s something that has not yet happened this season, until Thursday night.

In the post-game scrums both Max Pacioretty and Jeff Petry mentioned that the Habs benefited from practicing clean d-zone exits and controlled o-zone entries. On this night, practice made perfect.

In their own zone, the top-4 defense were solid. Shea Weber and Alexei Emelin may not have been a combination in the minds of many before the season began, but they have been a shutdown pair every game. The second pairing was equally good on Thursday night, with Jeff Petry having one of his best games of the season.  Petry’s stat line was one assist, plus-3, four hits and an icetime of 22:29.

The Canadiens had a great start, playing their best first period of the season. Then after a strong second period, fans began speaking about their best 40 minutes of the season. The Canadiens didn’t disappoint in the third putting their stamp on the most complete game of this young season.

Some records would fall on this night:

By starting at 9-0-0 Carey Price set a new season-opening win streak, breaking the mark of 8-0-0 set by Charlie Hodge.

Elias Sports announced that the Canadiens have won 12 of their first 14 games to begin a season for the first time in their 99-year history in the NHL.

~~~

▲     Carey Price, Shea Weber, Daniel Carr, Alexei Emelin, Andrei Markov, Jeff Petry, Alexander Radulov, Phillip Danault

▼     Nathan Beaulieu, Joel Hanley

1. Phillip Danault  MTL
2. Carey Price MTL
3. Jeff Petry  MTL

• On chemistry between Radulov and Galchenyuk: “They communicate a lot but I don’t understand what they say on the bench.”

Max Pacioretty

• “It hasn’t been perfect, but we’re trending upwards after tonight. We have gotten bounces recently and we have relied on Carey [Price] too much at times, but all things considered we have the right mindset in this room.”
• “I liked the resiliency — some great saves by Carey and the rest of the guys stepping up when we had to kill those penalties. I think we played a much better executed game tonight than we have in the last couple.”
• On 58 hits by the Kings, “We’re not really aware of the hits until we go see the stat sheet after. All it means is that we had the puck a lot.”

Carey Price

• “It was our best game collectively in a while, for sure. I thought we utilised our speed well. They’re a big heavy team and they were leaning on us a lot. We just kept our feet moving and maintained a bit of puck possession down low.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com