CANADIENS
Montreal

PENGUINS
Pittsburgh

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings 

[one_half]Pacioretty – Galchenyuk – Radulov
Lehkonen – Plekanec – Andrighetto
Byron – Danault – Shaw
De La Rose – Mitchell – Flynn
[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Emelin – Weber
Barberio – Petry
Beaulieu – Redmond
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders

Price
Montoya

Scratches

Daniel Carr, Ryan Johnston

Injured Reserve

David Desharnais (knee), Greg Pateryn (ankle), Andrei Markov (lower body)

Game Report

It was a rather dominating performance by the reigning Stanley Cup champs. And the lunatics were out in force after the game to explain the loss. Both fans and media were well-represented.

Injuries continue to be raised as a reason not to worry about the Canadiens performance. That’s despite the fact that Montreal has one significant injury. Andrei Markov has been missed, there is no doubt about that. But on a team with a general manager who puts an emphasis on defensive depth, this loss shouldn’t put the team in a tailspin.

Greg Pateryn is a valuable player but he plays the third pairing and did spend time as a healthy scratch this season. David Desharnais is an AHL-caliber player and should not enter the conversation. The Penguins were dealing with a significant injury too, with the absence of Kris Letang, but it did not slow them down.

So let’s eliminate injuries as a reason for the Canadiens poor play. Ditto for the Habs schedule and ‘puck luck.’ 

Some would say that Michel Therrien just doesn’t have the talent to coach compared to top teams like the Penguins. But in this game, the goals were scored by Ian Cole, Eric Fehr, Jake Guentzel and Olli Maatta. No Crosby, Malkin or Kessel. Letang is injured and Fleury wasn’t playing. An elite coach is able to motivate the players he has.

Which brings us to the most ludicrous reason of them all: Carey Price is playing poorly.

So I suppose that these folks would make the case that the Canadiens are a well-oiled machine playing solid hockey and are simply being undercut by an abundance of soft goals? That simply is not true. Price was named third star in the Detroit game and was one of a handful of Montreal players who showed up in this game.

But the dim lightbulbs will then trot out Price’s goal against average in recent games as if GAA is only borne by the goaltender. In other words, Price solely earned a GAA of 4.00 in Wednesday’s game. That is absurd.

In four losses in the past 10 days, the Canadiens have a grand total of 82 shots on goal. An average of 20.5 shots per game is well below the season average of 30.0 shots per game. It is even considerably below the worst shot average in the league of 27.3 by the Devils. So the Habs aren’t generating scoring chances.

For those four games the Canadiens averaged 0.75 goals per game. Yes, Montreal scored three goals TOTAL in the four losses. And some people are blaming Carey Price?

It should be obvious that the Habs are not going to win many games scoring less than a goal a game. In the last two games, the Canadiens had a total of two power-plays. So their poor play is not drawing penalties keeping their sixth-rank power-play on the sidelines.

There are problems on this club that need to be addressed. Goaltending is not an issue.

~~~

▲     Carey Price, Alexei Emelin, Shea Weber, Sven Andrighetto, Artturi Lehkonen, Tomas Plekanec

▼     Nathan Beaulieu, Zach Redmond, Jeff Petry, Max Pacioretty, Alexander Radulov, Alex Galchenyuk, Brian Flynn

1.  Evgeni Malkin  PIT
2.  Conor Sheary  PIT
3.  Justin Schultz  PIT

• “When you don’t compete, you don’t have a chance. We played the Stanley Cup champions. To give yourself a chance, you have to compete. Our focus was not there. It was a disappointing night.”

Max Pacioretty

• “We’ve got to find a way to create offense. It hasn’t been there the last two games. I’m not sure why. We have to feel confident with the puck and make plays when they’re there. It seems like we’re not making those plays and the result is not getting many opportunities.”

Jeff Petry

• “We turned the puck over quite a bit. For a team like that, they feed on that and the transition game. They transition the puck quickly, so I felt they played the game they wanted to play. I think it’s something that we need to take a look at and clean up. It’s a fine line to push to score goals, but we can’t have it hurt our defensive game.”

Mark Barberio

• “You can’t get frustrated because there are still a lot of games left in the season and a lot are coming up soon. You just have to look at the errors and correct them as quickly as possible.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com