The Montreal Canadiens are riding high off a big win over the Boston Bruins on Saturday night as they welcome the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday evening at the Bell Centre.
The Habs continue to play well and look to improve their record to 8-5-2 as they wrap up a really tough week that has seen them beat the Detroit Red Wings and Bruins after falling to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Here are 24 Thoughts on the Canadiens 16th game of the season against the Vancouver Canucks.
First Period
Habs facing former teammate Casey DeSmith who you know will be out to get back at his former teammates who never once sacrificed to block a shot in front of him…. I’m kidding. Almost all of this is me kidding.
Except that it’s Hockey Fights Cancer Night. No kidding, good on the NHL for continuing this initiative. I guess it’s okay to use purple tape as long as it is not purple among other colors tape. And praise the baby Jesus for every day we got to cheer for Saku Koivu after winning the battle against cancer.
Juraj Slafkovsky gets a scoring chance on a two on one and completely whiffs on the puck. Totally blew it. This will get blown out of proportion on twitter like some sort of evidence the Canadiens draft team was actually drunk at the 2022 NHL Draft, but do you know who else looked to be gripping their stick a little too tight early in their career? Cole Caufield not that long ago. Now he fires lasers under the cross bar with less thought than a dog taking a leak on a fire hydrant. It just takes a little time and Slafkovsky is going to learn from these mistakes and soon start burying those chances.
Jake Allen’s helmet looks like something out of the NHL 96 video game. Did he get it from Andy Moog?
Tanner Pearson ripped one off the far post and that’s too bad because you would love to see him stick it to the team that nearly ruined his career last season. He had a somewhat routine hand injury but the team misdiagnosed it and turned it into something much worse than it needed to be. Even Quinn Hughes called his own team out last season for the way they dealt with Pearson’s injury. A goal there would have been awesome for the veteran winger.
Jake Evans has looked better in the past two games playing with Rafael Harvey-Pinard. He didn’t have a lot of offensive support with Joel Armia and Michael Pezzetta on his wings but Evans and RHP have created a few chances in the past two games. Could be an even more dangerous fourth line if Jesse Ylonen was playing with them.
Newhook beats out an icing after being dozens of feet back of the Canucks defenseman when the puck was dumped in. His speed is something you can’t teach and at the very worst he is going to be an Andrew Cogliano type player who just skates faster than everyone else and breaks up plays in the defensive zone. I like his offensive touch as well, but there’s some work to do before we guarantee he is a top six player in the future.
Nine whistles in the entire first period of this hockey game. That’s what happens when a west coast team gets here for one game a year, they want to get to Chez Paree as soon a possible.