Now that Christmas is over, the Montreal Canadiens will have to set their sites on an important and difficult back-to-back against Carolina and Tampa Bay.
The Montreal Canadiens didn’t end finish off the stretch before the holiday break the way they would’ve wanted to. They had the chance to sweep the west coast after beating both the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames. However, careless play and a lack of compete after the first 10 minutes cost them the game despite the fact that Antti Niemi had a relatively good performance.
Montreal has three more games left in January, and they include a pretty tough back-to-back. The Habs will be Carolina on Tuesday to take on the Hurricanes followed by the Lighting the next day.
Tampa is Tampa. Most people would give them the Stanely Cup if they could, but it will be an emotional game for Jonathan Drouin. Carolina is a bit of a wild-card. They have a young, prosperous blueline and a star forward in Jeff Skinner, but other areas of the team have been rather suspect, especially goaltending. On the other hand, Carolina plays a very structured system, so the Habs will have to keep their noses clean there.
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We also don’t know the status of Shea Weber yet. He was sent home last Monday to recover from this lingering foot injury, and Brett Lernout‘s demotion could hint at his potential return to action. At the same time, the Habs won’t want to rush Weber and make it worse.
We’ll have to wait to get some updates from Claude Julien at practice. Considering the up and down effort the Habs have had in this latest stretch; the practice will probably be a hard one.
Morning Links
A holiday wish list for the Montreal Canadiens
As good as finding a winning streak underneath the Christmas tree would be for the Habs, there could be other things that they’d enjoy as well.
RECAP | Amerks – Rocket: No Early Christmas Presents for Laval
In case you missed Laval’s latest game on Christmas Eve, here’s a solid recap of it. Unfortunately, things aren’t going well for the Montreal Canadiens at the AHL level right now either. On the bright side, Noah Juulsen looks good.
Hickey on Hockey: Canadiens sure could use David Desharnais right now
I’ve seen people say they miss former players such as P.K. Subban, Alexander Radulov, or Andrei Markov. David Desharnais is an interesting name to include in that group.