Montreal Canadiens: 24 Thoughts On Habs Frustrating Loss To Flames

Second Period Thoughts

A weird spinaround shot from the center of the slot fools Montembeault as Nazem Kadri opens the scoring. That won’t help with his current contract negotiations!

Seriously though, what does a Montembeault extension look like? He’s 27 years old and has a career save percentage of .896. Sounds like a contract is coming, at least according to Elliotte Friedman, but what do you give someone like Montembeault? My guess is two years at $3 million per year if it gets done.

Gustav Lindstrom scores his first with the Canadiens, but it was started by some nice board play by Slafkovsky again. He chased down a loose puck and found some space by spinning quickly off a defender and getting the puck to Christian Dvorak down low. Well deserved assist for the youngster.

Soeaking of Dvorak, his play has been great lately. He is constantly setting up teammates with nice passes and does a lot of little things defensively as well to limit chances and get the puck on a Canadiens player’s stick. Not a ton of points after missing the first ten games, but he continues to look good out there.

Kaiden Guhle nearly got a skate to the face as he fell awkwardly right off a faceoff. He stayed down for a moment but skated off and looks to have been whacked in the nose with Elias Lindholm’s boot and not the skate blade. He’s lucky, but you have to think with everything going on in the hockey world that players would be more willing to wear neck guards and anti-cut protective gear. Like, how is it not mandatory yet?

I have been critical of Anderson’s game at times but this is just getting laughable. He has been fantastic lately but can’t buy a goal. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, maybe Artturi Lehkonen when he was here. Anderson just had another great chance in the slot and somehow the puck goes off the iron and into the crowd. I think it hit an invisible wall that appears in the net whenever Anderson shoots the puck.

Good luck to all other left shot defenders, and that includes Mike Matheson, Jordan Harris and Arber Xhekaj in finding ice time with this team next season. Guhle and Lane Hutson are going to take over the left side of the defense very soon. Guhle looks terrific again tonight and his combination of size, speed and smarts is difficult to match.

Caufield has seven shots on goal after two periods of play but is yet to score. Won’t take him long if he keeps up this pace. I doubted that Dvorak was the right centre with Caufield and it probably doesn’t last long term, but it has looked great tonight.