The Montreal Canadiens’ defensive issues are getting worse as the days go by, and it’ll be interesting to see whether the team meeting triggers a response.
Before Thursday night’s game, we had a post out discussing three things the Montreal Canadiens needed to change moving forward.
They took only two penalties in their game against the Detroit Red Wings, but they gave up one man-advantage goal via Anthony Mantha. The shots were virtually even (34 vs. 35 in favour of the Habs), but they were royally out-chanced and out-possessed at 5v5. To get down to the numbers, the Montreal Canadiens had 16 scoring chances to Detroit’s 27 (including high-danger scoring chances 12-4) while the latter finished the game with a nearly 53% Corsi-For rating (Habs were at 47%).
The team didn’t make it easy on Carey Price one bit. There were way too many bodies in front of Price for him to get a good view or kick away a rebound to a safe spot. Missed assignments were an issue there, and you can see that with Price’s big stop on Taro Hirose, where Max Domi was caught watching the puck instead of picking up his man. Shea Weber didn’t look too perfect there either as he was in a good position to stop it but moved out of the way to challenge Andreas Athanasiou.
The Tyler Bertuzzi goal doesn’t look any better. There’s chaos in front of Price via Dylan Larkin, while Philip Danault is trailing Bertuzzi. Ben Chiarot initially has his back to the play, thinking the puck is in front of him and quickly turns realizing what’s going on, but Danault is there. If there is ever a time to take a penalty, that’s it, but Danault doesn’t do enough to stop Bertuzzi.
Now we fast forward to the present day where the Montreal Canadiens don’t have a practice but instead having a team meeting and do video work ahead of tomorrow’s match against the St. Louis Blues.
Will that change anything? Hopefully.
Claude Julien hasn’t been a stranger to any of these issues, and he’s made it clear since the beginning of the season. The team’s defensive breakdowns were an issue last year as well and again speaks to the impact of Price. But they can’t do that anymore.
The rest of the league is too good, and Price can only hang on for so long before he’s beaten, especially if the team isn’t helping him out enough.
It also doesn’t help that the Montreal Canadiens have a tight schedule ahead. After Saturday’s game, the Habs will have the Tampa Bay Lightning, Minnesota Wild (twice), and another Blues battle on the 19th. If there were ever a time for a team meeting to work, it would be now.
Advanced Stats from Natural Stat Trick