Montreal Canadiens: 24 Thoughts On Habs Loss To Canucks

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.

Second Period

Noah Juulsen made a solid defensive play to not allow Sean Monahan to get to a loose puck in the slot, but also avoided taking a penalty. Always wished the Habs found a way to keep him. He had too much potential to lose on waivers

Just realized the reason there were no whistles in the first period is because the referees just did nothing. Justin Barron just took a stick to the mouth from a Canucks defender and there was no call. I’m logging off for a few minutes, I have to send a resume to the NHL right quick to be a ref. I mean, what other job can you make a decent wage without doing your job all winter and then get the summer off?

Christian Dvorak fires one home from long range but it is called back on an offside. Second time this has happened to the Canadiens this week. Were we really this desperate for offside reviews? I watched hockey for a long time before this rule came in to play and I never remember being outraged that a player was probably a quarter of an inch offside well before a puck entered the net.

Weird play as Kaiden Guhle has a rare bad shift. He jumped into the offensive zone but hesitated a bit too long with the puck and JT Miller took it the other way. On the way back, Guhle ran into his own goalie and knocked Jake Allen’s stick behind the net. A few seconds later Ilya Mikheyev snipes one over Allen’s glove. Guhle still rules.

Speaking of Guhle, he just carried the puck up ice, made a pass to get into the attacking zone, jumped into the play, then immediately got back and even though there was a weird bounce that could have sent a Canucks player on a rush, Guhle was already back defensively and just knocked the puck away. His combination of size and speed, of offense and defense is hard to find at his age. I hope he gets the Jake Sanderson treatment this summer and is locked up long term while we watch the salary cap quickly rise for the next several years.

Casey DeSmith makes a great save on Brendan Gallagher after a ridiculous turnover. Maybe the Habs should have kept four goalies.

Slafkovsky has played 11:05 after two periods which is fifth among forwards on the team. He also leads the team in shots on goal with five and has had a handful of dangerous chances. Still no goals to show for it but he is having one of his best games of his career which is great to see.

Kind of feels like the Habs are right in this one but also are down 3-0 after two periods. Not their best game of the year as they are having a hard time getting to the Canucks net, and will need to create a little more traffic in front in the third period if they want to chip away at this deficit.