Montreal Canadiens: 24 Thoughts On Habs Falling Flat vs Predators

The Montreal Canadiens hosted the Nashville Predators for the only time this season last night.

First Period Thoughts

David Savard surprisingly makes his return to the lineup after missing about six weeks. He starts the game next to Mike Matheson and hopefully is ready for a lot of ice time as Matheson played nearly 30 minutes last night. Habs are still dealing with a number of injuries, including blue liners Jordan Harris and Chris Wideman but it is also good to see someone return to health.

Michael Pezzetta was busy on his first shift of the game. He is looking fresh after being a healthy scratch last night. He took a healthy run at a Predators defender along the side boards and then got in on the forecheck and landed another hit on a Preds defenseman. We could have used some of that Saturday night against the Sabres.

Brendan Gallagher is allowed to draw penalties?!?! He gets cross checked from behind at the top of the Predators crease as the puck was headed in his direction. An obvious minor penalyy if there was even one but I just thought it would go uncalled since it was Gallagher on the receiving end. Refs must have mistaken him for Jake Evans.

Ahh, a weak makeup call goes against Juraj Slafkovsky as the refs make up for their mistake. They know they can't call a penalty when Gallagher is on the receiving end. And now to really make up for it, Gallagher is headed to the box after being tangled up with Tyson Barrie just a couple of minutes later.

The Predators opened the scoring on the power play as Colton Sissons (you can really only hope to contain him) tipped in a Filip Forsberg shot. The Habs defense kind of just let Sissons hang out in behind them and Jake Allen couldn't see the puck being shot at all.

The Canadiens power play is just spinning around in the neutral zone. I am not a special teams coach at the NHL level (or any level) but this seems like a poor setup. Didn't they score yesterday when Suzuki just skated into the zone really fast with the puck?

Three penalties per side made for a weird opening 20 minutes. The Canadiens can go a lot of games without getting three power plays so getting the man advantage this often had them out of sorts it seems. Both teams played last night and had to travel a short distance for this game so that is no excuse for the Canadiens. Just hard to get into a rhythm with all those penalty calls.

Oddly. Joel Armia played less than two minutes at even strength as there was often someone in the box and his number wasn't called as the team's fourth line winger when the team's were both at full strength.

Second Period Thoughts

Gallagher was held up and hauled down just a few seconds into the second period but the refs must have decided not to call everything during the intermission because far less was signalled a few times in the first but this one is not a call, Unless, they just rememebered the no calls on Gallagher rule.

I told you that you can only hope to contain Sissons and the Canadiens are unable to do that. They get caught with all three forwards a little too high in the defensive zone and Sissons is able to pounce on a rebound and snap it past Allen to double the Predators lead. Both of these teams did play last night but the Preds look a lot sharper and are winning a lot of the little battles for pucks.

Jayden Struble isn't necessarily having his greatest game with the Canadiens but he is stepping up to initiate body contact a little more often. It was a staple of his game in college and he hit to hurt back then and will continue to do so at the NHL level once he gets his timing perfected. I do find it interesting that he is still in the lineup now that Arber Xhekaj and David Savard are healthy.

It is just one game but it leads to the bigger discussion of which defenders do we see stick around long term? If Struble continues to stake his claim to a role it is bad news for every left shot defender not named Lane Hutson and Kaiden Guhle. Some interesting and tough decisions to come by next offseason but there should be an exciting player or two coming back to Montreal.

The Predators got a bench minor for unsportsmanlike conduct which is something you do not see every day. There are a couple of magic words that can elicit that reaction from a ref but since this is a family website we will not be listing them all here.

One thing I find wild about the NHL is that checking from behind is not an automatic penalty. Struble just got hit right on the numbers into the glass with a pretty severe degree of impact. He is big and strong though so he just jumped back up and therefore there is no call. Had he been shaken up on the hit like Justin Barron a night earlier there would have been a major penatly called. Why is the call so strictly tied to the degree of injury on the play?

Joel Armia thought he scored to make it a 2-1 game but upon further review, Gallagher was near the net so it was called goaltender interference. Actually, Gallagher kind of pitchforked Jusse Saros pad and pushed it into the net before Armia slid in the puck so the no goal call does make sense in this case.

Knowing the Canadiens could ahve really used that goal before the end of the period, Jake Evans rips home a backhander for his first goal since opening night of the season. Smart player, good defensively, makes stuff happen out there and is finally rewarded with a goal.