Montreal Canadiens Game Reactions: It’s a Bittersweet Symphony

The Montreal Canadiens winning streak against the Toronto Maple Leafs has come to an end as they drop another game 4-3 in overtime.

We should probably start by addressing the obvious here. The Montreal Canadiens 14 game winning streak against the Toronto Maple Leafs is over. At base level, it’s another loss which isn’t good anyway you try to spin it.

One thing I’ll say is that this game definitely had an extra umph to it. Whether it was because it was Hockey Night in Canada, a rivalry matchup, or just the overall optics of everything, this game was heated from start to finish.

The Bell Center was packed with Leafs and Habs fans, the crowd sang O’Canada, it was definitely a good night for hockey. Montreal put in a couple of days of hard work to make sure that the result of this game was in the team’s favour. Question marks were making their presence around the team as well in particular Tomas Plekanec and Alex Galchenyuk who were game-time decisions.

There were some little things on the Montreal Canadiens hit list for Saturday night:

1. Continue to start strong
2. SCORE
3. Limit the defensive mistakes

Well 2/3 isn’t too bad. Although the Habs managed to get a point after this, it’s now their fourth loss in a row. Next up for the team is California. The road trip is happening earlier than usual, and even though some of them aren’t as dangerous as before, it would’ve been better to head out with a win.

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Thoughts and Observations

The Beauty

Again, it was another solid effort by the Montreal Canadiens. They honestly were the better team for the majority of the game. Additionally there were goals!

The Habs opened up the scoring about two minutes into the game. Of course, Jonathan Drouin started it all. The 23-year-old carried the puck into the Leafs’ zone and put on the brakes and gave a streaking in Jeff Petry a great feed. One blast by Petry and the Habs are up 1-0.

This was just an example of Petry’s improved play from Wednesday’s loss. He and Karl Alzner were pretty reliable for the Habs. Alzner actually did something that none of us thought would actually happen. No not a shutdown play or a blocked shot, but a scoring play.

Alzner did a great job holding the zone and evading Tyler Bozak on the blue-line. He then send a slap pass right around Drouin who tipped the puck over Frederik Andersen‘s glove. I don’t know about you guys, but it took a while for me to shut my mouth after that one.

Despite all that, there was one event that all Habs fans needed to see. It looks like Alex Galchenyuk is slowly starting to find his groove. He started on the fourth line, but there was a point when Claude Julien put him on that top line. That didn’t lead to any goals, but the same couldn’t be said for the power play.

The pop at the Bell Center after he scored was incredible. Seeing his teammates huddle around him was great to see as well.

The Grease

Early tendency of the team’s recent losses have been those overall good efforts spoiled by mistakes. Besides the Leafs’ overtime winner, the three regulation goals did not need to happen.

Goal #1: Jordie Benn…why?! It seems like a game can’t go by without him doing something that allows the other team to score. Benn misplays the puck and gets it right to Auston Matthews who eventually scores to put Toronto up 2-1. It’s hard for us to criticize him watching the game from home, but there were at least 3 other things he could’ve done that wouldn’t have led to the goal.

Would you have liked Carey Price to save that? Maybe. He most likely thought so too because he looked pretty upset afterwards.

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Goal #2: This goal wasn’t really too error filled. It was more like, “Wish you could’ve had that”. Drouin technically wins the face off against Bozak but the puck comes out to the side to James van Riemsdyk and Artturi Lehkonen. It looked like Lehkonen assumed the puck would be moved up which unfortunately left JVR open to shoot and score.

Again, would you have liked Price to have that? Maybe. It was a pretty fast exchange of events.

Goal #3: Funny because at first this goal was waved off. The fact that the puck actually crossed the line isn’t the worst part. It wasn’t even how Price ended with his back towards everyone. Patrick Marleau should not have been able to get that close to the net. He easily glided by four Habs players to the net. They must’ve assumed a whistle was coming, but even still, you can’t assume because sometimes things like that happen.

The Montreal Canadiens are trending in the right direction. At the same time they can learn a lot from Saturday night. It’ll be interesting to see whether Julien makes a tweak or keeps things the same.

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What did you make of the game? Are you concerned? Let us know your thoughts down below