CANADIENS
Montreal

3-4

MAPLE LEAFS
Toronto

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Drouin – Lehkonen
Byron – Plekanec – Gallagher
Hudon – Danault – Shaw
Galchenyuk – De La Rose – Hemsky 
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Mete – Weber
Alzner – Petry
Benn – Davidson
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Montoya

Scratches

Joe Morrow, Torrey Mitchell, David Schlemko

Injuries

None

Game Report

Your Montreal Canadiens have now lost four straight games, including the first two contests at the Bell Centre. If not for a 43-save performance by Carey Price to open the season, they would not have a win at all.

And, as you recall, those two points came as Montreal eked out a shootout win over the lowly Sabres. It is the only point that Buffalo has earned so far this season.

Coming into the game, the Canadiens had just four goals in four games. The Maple Leafs had 22, ten alone in first periods.

So there was some relief among Habs faithful that it was Montreal that opened the scoring just over two minutes in. Jeff Petry picked up his first goal of the season on a seeing-eye shot from just inside the blue line with Artturi Lehkonen providing the screen.

Petry’s weak shot from well out was the example that the Canadiens would follow over and over again throughout the night as they meaninglessly ran up their shot total. 

The Leafs struck for two goals in 44 seconds part way through the frame. James van Riemsdyk used Petry as a screen to get Toronto on the board. Then Auston Matthews took advantage of some shoddy defensive play by Jordie Benn and Brandon Davidson to take the lead.

Before the period was out, Alex Galchenyuk scored his first goal of the season. It was also the first marker for the Canadiens power-play. Despite being regulated to the fourth line, Galchenyuk showed a strong effort, earning an occasional shift on the top trio.

The Canadiens finally heard from their promised saviour, Jonathan Drouin, midway through game five. Drouin redirected a smart feed from Karl Alzner for his first goal of the season.

In the third period, the Leafs showed the home team how to score in tight when Patrick Marleau tied the game. Toronto has players who aren’t timid to go to the net and they also have a budding superstar in Matthews. The Canadiens have neither.

While Tomas Plekanec did a good job keeping Matthews under wraps for most of regulation, the 20-year old put away the Canadiens in overtime. Still recovering from the flu, Plekanec, along with Paul Byron, was a curious decision by Claude Julien to start overtime. After their own 2-on-1, Byron and Plekanec were left to chase Matthews and 21-year-old William Nylander.

Some will try to contend that the Canadiens played well enough to win this game pointing to the shot differential. They didn’t. The vast majority of their shots on goal had as much chance of entering the net as a batting practice pitcher has of blowing one by a MLB hitter.

Other folks will say that the Canadiens problems will be solved with a better goaltender. They have as much credibility as Jack Todd and his delusional conspiracy theories. On Marleau’s goal tonight, Todd tweeted, “What angle showed that puck clearly over the line? None that I saw.”

Again tonight we heard that the Canadiens ‘have a bad record, not a bad team.’ It the same excuses that were spouted during the pre-season.

But this team has problems. First and foremost, while they can create scoring chances, they have a serious lack of finish. And it doesn’t help when the head coach and general manager are doing so much to undermine one of their few offensive threats in Galchenyuk.

Despite the smoke and mirrors, the Canadiens still do not have a number one centre. At just 19 per cent at the faceoff dot tonight, Drouin is not a centre, he just is forced to play one on TV.

Beyond Shea Weber and Victor Mete, the Canadiens defence is, to be polite, unreliable. A sign of the desperate state of affairs on the back end is that David Schlemko’s return from a hand injury is being treated as the second coming.

And then there is the small matter that the general manager has built the team on speed but the coach’s scheme requires big bodies winning battles.

Lastly, the Canadiens need to take a serious look at one of their two biggest rivals. In a very short period of time, just three years, Brendan Shanahan has rebuilt the Maple Leafs into a team that will likely finish above Montreal in the standings this season. The organization, that Shanahan has put together, has a young, talented team on the ice, are better behind the bench than the Canadiens and has the best front office in hockey.

This week, the Canadiens will head out for three games in California. But it’s still early they say.

~~~

▲     Artturi Lehkonen, Shea Weber, Victor Mete, Alex Galchenyuk

▼      Jordie Benn, Ales Hemsky

1. Auston Matthews  TOR
2. Jonathan Drouin  MTL
3. Jeff Petry  MTL

• “We’re going to keep working because at the end of the day, there’s a pretty good team here that probably deserves a better record than it has. We can’t be satisfied with just thinking we’re better than we are. We have to work our way out of it and down the road, it’ll make us a better team.”

Karl Alzner

• “It definitely feels better to get a point. The last couple of games have been a step forward even though we hadn’t made it to overtime or gotten the two points. There’s a lot of promise in the dressing room. I see good things coming. If we keep putting pucks at the net, we’re going to get some of those fun ones that go off things and find their way in and that’s going to spark the team.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com

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