Montreal Canadiens: 24 Thoughts On Habs Weird Game 36
The Montreal Canadiens continued a lengthy road trip last night in Tampa Bay against the Lightning. After consecutive road losses to start their post-Christmas schedule they were looking for a better effort.
The Canadiens began the night just four points back of the Lightning and five points back of the second wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference.
Here are 24 thoughts on the Habs 36th game of the season.
First Period Thoughts
Sam Montembeault gets the start after sitting three consecutive games. I think the plan is for him to be the team's starting goaltender for the next couple of years so it is odd to see him on the bench for three in a row, but that's the three goalie system at play.
Seven defensemen were in the lineup last night as Christian Dvorak was ruled out with an injury and Johnathan Kovacevic took his place in the lineup. This always leads to an odd formation as lines and defense pairing keep getting shuffled throughout the game. Will be interesting to see if it affects the team's chemistry at all.
Cole Caufield got a glorious scoring chance but was robbed by the blocker of Lightning goaltender Jonas Johansson. Caufield has not been scoring as often as he would like and isn't getting the same chances he usually does. He finally scored a beauty on the backhand against Florida so it is great to see him get a great chance early on against the Lightning as well. It didn't go in, but they will if he keeps getting open like he did.
Speaking of Jonas Johansson, when Andrei Vasilevskiy was injured at the start of the season, I thought a Montembeault trade to the Lightning made a ton of sense. It was either that, or they had to run with Johansson. Well, they decided to run with Johansson and entered their 38th game of the season outside of the playoffs.
Jesse Ylonen playing up the lineup with Dvorak out. Jake Evans had been playing on the second line with Sean Monahan and Josh Anderson but with Dvorak out, Evans needed to move back to the middle of the ice. This is a big opportunity for Ylonen who I keep saying deserves a chance higher up in the lineup. Hopefully he can make some things happen offensively and earns a longer look in the top nine.
Justin Barron made a breakout pass from behind his own goal line to Caufield at center ice. Caufield then carried the puck into the Lightning zone, stickhandled around a couple of guys and dropped the puck to Nick Suzuki who took a quick shot that was tipped by.... Barron in front of the Lightning goal. It didn't go in, but it highlighted Barron's strengths as a guy who can easily make a 110 foot pass and also jump into the attack to create a scoring chance.
Joel Armia made a nice dash in the final seconds of the period as he stole the puck from Nikita Kucherov just inside the Canadiens blue line and turned it up ice. He carried it all the way into the Lightning zone, froze a defender with a fake drop pass, got a good shot on goal, grabbed the rebound and tried a wraparound. He must hvae received a nice talking to after his selfish penalty cost the team against the Panthers.
Pretty solid first period for the Canadiens as they limited chances against and kept the many stars of the Lightning away from the Habs net aside from one great chance from Steven Stamkos who drove down the middle of the ice for a chance. Tampa Bay had just four shots on goal as the Canadiens defended well, including two minutes while shorthanded.
Second Period Thoughts
The Canadiens were able to kill off one penalty in the first period and it must have made them quite confident as Nick Suzuki takes an obvious hooking penalty early in the second period. The Canadiens look great in killing it off again. Who is this team?
Cole Caufield slickly steals the puck away from Stamkos in the Lightning zone and immediately fires it five hole to open the scoring. Goal scorers tend to be streaky and I think we may have seen the beginning of a hot streak when Caufield confidently roofed the puck on the backhand aaginst the Panthers.
Does anyone else think Stamkos will seriously consider signing with the Canadiens this summer? He would play for longtime linemate Martin St. Louis who pretty much showed him the ropes as a rookie NHLer and also probably play with a great playmaker like Nick Suzuki or Kirby Dach. Lane Hutson would feed him pucks on the power play. I don't know, but if the Lightning don't want to sign him, and they have had six months to do so already, then I think Montreal would make sense for him.
Josh Anderson gets in on the forecheck and absolutely rocks Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak. He then drops the gloves, as Luke Glendening came after him and Anderson left a couple of knuckle imprints on the Lightning forwards face. Anderson also got a minor penalty for charging on the play for some reason. His skates were on the ice when contact was made, he didn't accelerate into the contact and he didn't bring his arms or elbow up to make contact. It was just a big hit. NHL is the no hitting league.
The Canadiens scored the weirdest goal in NHL history. Montembeault stopped the puck and held on to for a couple of seconds but there was no whistle. He played it to Johnathan Kovacevic but everyone on the ice thought there must have been a stoppage of play. All five Lightning skaters were heading for the bench, even goaltender Johansson went for a bit of a skate into the corner and Kovacevic made a heads up play to fire the puck the length of the ice into the empty net. Credit to Montembeault as well as you could see him pointing and shouting to Kovacevic as he gave him the puck on that play.
The somewhat controversial goal seemed to give a shot of adrenaline to the Lightning roster. They were pretty sleepy fro the first half of the game but had a renewed energy after the refs reviewed the goal and counted it. But like, what were they even reviewing?
An aggressive pinch by Mike Matheson led to the first Lightning goal. He tried to cut the play off at the Canadiens attacking blue line but a short pass led to a 2-on-1 where Nic Paul found Brayden Point and the All-Star made no mistake as he broke in all alone and fired the puck over Montembeault's glove.
Montembeault completely whiffs on a Lightning pass that doesn't connect and rolls toward him. He tries to play it to the corner but just misses it and then it hits his pad and goes into the back of the Habs net. Ahhh those hockey gods making sure the Canadiens didn't get away with one in that period.
Third Period Thoughts
After Kovacevic's snipe in the second period, the Canadiens are tied with the Colorado Avalanche with the most goals by defensemen in the league with 28. The Canadiens are second last in the Eastern Conference in goals scored, so all this stat tells me is the Canadiens must have the lowest scoring forwards in the NHL.
The Lightning are a high scoring team but have surprisingly allowed more goals than they scored so far this season. They desperately need some cheap depth on the blue line and no one has more inexpensive talent on the blue line than the Canadiens. Could we see a crazy overpay for Arber Xhekaj or Jordan Harris? The Lightning like to give up an incredible number of draft picks for cheap talent like when they dealt 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th round picks and Cal Foote for Tanner Jeannot. Could the Habs land a haul for Harris?
The Canadiens do have to move a defenseman at some point, but who is it going to be? Lane Hutson will be here by season's end and joins a group that already has too many NHL caliber defender as Xhekaj is stuck in the minors. Could it be Xhekaj moved? Harris? Struble? Matheson? The only truly safe ones I think are Guhle because he looks like a top pairing guy in the making, Hutson because of his unnusual skill set and Barron because there aren't as many options on the right side.
Serge Savard made the Savardian spinorama famous but David Savard has an equally effective move at the blue line. He routinely does this move where he kind of fakes a shot and then controls the puck on his backhand with one hand on his stick as he moves to his left around an opposing player. He doesn't get a lot of credit for his offensive play, but there is some ability there.
Montembeault has made a couple of ridiculous saves in this game. Victor Hedman tried to blast a puck through him from about 25 feet and Branden Hagel had what appeared to be a full net to stuck the puck into until Montembeault dove across the crease like Marquis Grissom laying out to catch a short fly ball and stopped the puck. It was as nice as a save as you could ever see.
This game is kind of a microcosm of Montembeault's time with the Canadiens. Some phenomenal acrobatic saves mixed with a head scratching goal against. Usually the questionable goal against is because of him sliding out of the way as he overplays a chance, but last night's was just a whiff. If he can ever limit those bad ones against he would be a great goaltender.
Suzuki buried a goal from an almost impossible angle as the puck bounced to him at the side of the net. He was mostly behind the goal line but his stick was not and he fired a laser to the top corner after a Matheson point shot was stopped. I know everybody knows this, but when you focus on Suzuki's play for a while you just see a special player.
Canadiens led this game 2-0 but lost 4-3. They started this road trip 2-0-1 but since have gone 0-3-0. They have dropped from 15-13-5, while having us peek up at the wildcard spots to 15-16-5 and having us peek down at the draft lottery standings again. Ugh.