CANADIENS
Montreal

LIGHTNING
Tampa Bay

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Drouin – Lehkonen
Byron – De La Rose – Gallagher
Galchenyuk – Danault – Hudon
Deslauriers – Froese – Carr
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Mete – Petry
Alzner – Juulsen
Morrow – Benn

[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Niemi
Lindgren

Scratches

Tomas Plekanec, David Schlemko, Logan Shaw

Injuries

Ales Hemsky – concussion, Shea Weber – lower-body, Andrew Shaw – lower-body, Carey Price – concussion

Game Report 

The circus has come to Montreal. At least, that’s what it feels like. How else to explain a game that seemed to have so little to do with hockey?

The action started before the drop of the puck. The Canadiens announced that Tomas Plekanec, the longest serving member of the team, would be a healthy scratch. It appears that Plekanec will be denied 1000-games with the club, similar to the fate of Andrei Markov. Plekanec has played 981 games in a Canadiens jersey.

The mini-tributes on Twitter started from the same reporters who were calling for Plekanec to be traded, including one who wrote that the general manager should be fired if the veteran was still a member of the Canadiens, post-deadline. The hypocrisy.

In the afternoon, a trade was announced with the New York Islanders acquiring defenceman Brandon Davidson from the Edmonton Oilers. It was the same Davidson who had been tossed on the waiver scrapheap by Marc Bergevin on December 2nd. Davidson played well enough in his 23 games with the Oilers to earn the return of a third round draft pick to Edmonton GM Peter Chiarelli.

It’s also the same Brandon Davidson who said, “I haven’t quit smiling since I heard the news” after Edmonton plucked him off waivers. Davidson talked about being uncomfortable with the system in Montreal and a lack of usage as the reasons for his lost confidence while with the Canadiens.

In his scrum before the Canadiens-Lightning game, coach Claude Julien named Antti Niemi as the starting goaltender. While his technique leaves a lot to be desired, to his credit Niemi responded with a strong game mostly to slay a personal dragon. The Lightning were the team that lit up Niemi early in the season driving his stats through the roof and the goaltender to the waiver wire, twice.

The Lightning, the league’s number one team, and the squad with the NHL’s most potent offence came out flat. Throughout they played a high-risk brand of hockey turning on their firepower when they needed to keep the game close. Tampa’s lack of responsible play yielded scoring chances for the Habs.

The Lightning attack was somewhat diffused by 17 minutes in penalties from one of their most dynamic players. A Steven Stamkos – Karl Alzner fight? Yes, it happened. A strange night in Montreal, indeed. 

Habs fans may have breathed a sigh of relief that the 70-point Stamkos spent so much time on the sidelines but hockey enthusiasts knew that this was not right.

As the game wore on, it appeared that the Canadiens used a team-friendly reporter to leak the news that “Geoff Molson has total confidence in his GM Marc Bergevin to put the team back on track.” It’s not coincidence that the tweet appeared just 48 hours before the trade deadline on a Saturday night when Habs fans were tuned into the game and social media.

The tweet only served to confirm that merit does not play a role in the decision-making by the Canadiens organization. Of course, we knew that already.

Perhaps the coup de grâce of the game was Bell Centre fans booing Max Pacioretty for failing to get off a shot on a breakaway. The fact that Pacioretty had a goal and an assist in the game was apparently lost on the mindless idiots.

The Pacioretty-hate has been brought to a fever pitch in Montreal as the mainstream media direct their fire at the captain in classic misdirection covering for their darling Jonathan Drouin who is having a miserable season. The media are joined by the Subbanites who blame Pacioretty for the trade of their idol.

This is not what hockey is supposed to be. Not in this city. This is a circus and certainly not the qualities that built a once-great franchise, now only a shadow of its former self. Many long-term, committed Canadiens fans are left saying, ‘If this is what hockey has become in Montreal, count me out.’

===

▲  Max Pacioretty, Artturi Lehkonen, Brendan Gallagher, Antti Niemi

▼  Jonathan Drouin, Paul Byron, Nicolas Deslauriers

1. Brayden Point  TBL
2. Nikita Kucherov  TBL
3. Antti Niemi  MTL

• “We’ve got an injury to a really good goaltender and [Antti Niemi] stepped in and he’s doing the job. It’s been pretty impressive, for what he’s gone through and he came here with a great attitude.”

Antti Niemi

• “It’s good to get a point from them. I feel good about that.”

Lightning head coach Jon Cooper

• “Our game was a lot more responsible in that last 18 minutes than it was in the first two periods. But it’s a good sign with our team because they knew it. … It was just high-risk all over the place and they knew it, so that’s what I like about the group. They handled it themselves and then came out and won a hockey game because of it.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com