The Montreal Canadiens entered their 12th game of the season with a record of 5-4-2. It was even better before a recent three game road trip resulted in three losses.
They will look to avoid dropping down to hockey’s 0.500 tonight as they take on the Tampa Bay Lightning who might be a little angry after blowing a 4-1 lead to the Toronto Maple Leafs last night.
Here are 24 Thoughts on the Canadiens 12th game of the season:
First Period
The Lightning are playing a goalie who has only played two NHL games in his career and is still looking for his first win ever? We are doomed.
Pearson kind of hesitated with the puck in the neutral zone and the Lightning pounced on him to steal the puck and start an odd man rush. Nikita Kucherov finishes it off with a one-timer and he has TEN POINTS!?!? in his last two games and 25 seconds? That’s insane.
This Steven Stamkos guy looks pretty good. If the Lightning don’t want to re-sign him after this season for some reason (they should have already) then maybe he would want to come to Montreal and play for his old linemate Martin St. Louis?
Habs just look uncomfortable with the puck early on. The difficult “first game back from a road trip” thing that Don Cherry always used to talk about seems very real tonight. Canadiens fighting the puck, turning it over and the Bolts are coming at them in waves. Another turnover leads to a scoring chance which leads to a Slafkovsky penalty which leads to a beautiful Alex Barre-Boulet goal. 3-0.
Why haven’t the Canadiens ever claimed Barre-Boulet on waivers? He has scored 283 points in 271 career AHL games, is 26 years old and has been on waivers at the start of each of the past three seasons. He just scored his seventh point in 11 games this season with the Lightning and could have fit in nicely, and for free, with the Canadiens. I mean, it’s not like the team didn’t have room for a skilled forward in the past three seasons, right?
The Lightning had a three goal lead last night in the first period and blew it, losing to the Maple Leafs 5-4 in overtime. They seem to remember that as they are flying after making it 3-0 and just ripped a puck off the post. Poor Jake Allen is under siege.
This has not been the Canadiens best period of the year, and Allen gets yanked after allowing his fourth goal of the night. You could argue the first few weren’t his fault, but he should have had that fourth one and it’s time to give Montembeault a look tonight.
Maybe Allen saw the Oilers are looking for a goalie and doesn’t want to get traded there so he played bad on purpose. Yeah, that’s probably what just happened.