Montreal Canadiens: Staying awake in the city that never sleeps

The Montreal Canadiens are in the midst of a four-game slump and attempting to break it against the league’s top surprise won’t be difficult.

Who would’ve thought that on this date, the Vegas Golden Knights would be the second-best team in the league and the Montreal Canadiens, well, wouldn’t be. We can spend hours on discussing why that’s the case, but it is what it is.

The Habs are losing, they’ve lost four games in a row. However, performances such as Thursday’s make it hard to watch. Tanking is fine if necessary, respectably tanking is even easier. But games, where the effort isn’t there save for a few players, has a dragging effect on the fanbase. It wasn’t a complete stinker, Brendan Gallagher and Daniel Carr kept it close, but not close enough.

The silver lining is that Montreal generally plays well against top teams. Again, as weird as it still is to say, the expansion Vegas team are one of them. The Habs have been one of the few to actually beat the Golden Knights, so they have that in their favour.

Jordie Benn and Gallagher opened the scoring that night. Despite Vegas’ comeback, Max Pacioretty sealed the deal with his sixth goal of the season and the Habs held the lead for the win. It was a game that Claude Julien and fans could be proud of. Unfortunately, there haven’t been too many of those lately.