Montreal Canadiens: Handful of Lineup Changes Lead to Questions Before Tonight’s Game
The Montreal Canadiens lost 5-2 to the Arizona Coyotes last night and it literally does not get any worse than that for an NHL team in 2021-22.
The Coyotes built themselves to finish last and are getting a lot of competition from the Canadiens, who thought they were good at the start of the season. That has proven to not be the case as they sit with a 7-25-5 record after 37 games played.
The Canadiens will somehow look to bounce back from the bottomest of rock bottoms when they face the Dallas Stars tonight in Texas.
Before their brutal loss last night, the Canadiens actually had some good news off the ice when they announced the team had no one left in Covid protocol for the first time since Brendan Gallagher and Sami Niku were the first to be placed on the list back on December 2nd.
That didn’t last long though as Cole Caufield and Joel Armia were added to the Covid protocol today.
That meant the team had to do some lineup shuffling before facing the Stars at 8:30 PM EST. They have elected to go with:
Drouin – Pitlick – Anderson
Toffoli – Suzuki – Evans
Pezzetta – Poehling – Lehkonen
Dauphin – Dvorak – Hoffman
Chiarot – Savard
Clague – Petry
Romanov – Wideman
Montembeault
There are a few interesting tidbits here. Of course, reading into the lines of a 7-25-5 team might be a bit ridiculous but I have many questions.
Pitlick is centering the first line? Why? He has taken four face-offs this season, and the team is not missing a single centre at the moment. It doesn’t really make sense to put Pitlick at centre at all, does it? Especially on the top line. Odd.
Evans is on the wing? Why can’t he play centre and Pitlick play the wing? If Evans is going to play the wing, is there a less sensible line than Suzuki and Toffoli’s? Shouldn’t Evans be deeper down the lineup?
Are Dvorak and Hoffman on the fourth line or is Laurent Dauphin in the top six? Do the Canadiens even have a top six?
Why hasn’t Chiarot been traded yet? He is going to get hurt.
Can Romanov just play 28 minutes per night and only try to work on his incredible body checking just inside the Habs blue line? That’s really all we are here to see anymore.