It was going to be a challenge to match the emotions of playing against the Boston Bruins on a Saturday night. The Canadiens competed hard and right until the end but lost to Canada’s best team, the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday.
The 5-2 score doesn’t tell the whole story, two of Vancouver’s goals were empty netters and Arber Xhekaj scored a late meaningless goal as well.
“We got to look at the group guys here and even when we’re behind we’re still finding ways to keep ourselves in games and compete and find ways to get points and that’s big,” said goaltender Jake Allen.
Pluses:
- It was Juraj Slafkovsky most dominant performance of the season, maybe of his NHL career. Early in the game he was broke in on the left side on a 2-on-1 with Cole Caufield. Slafkovsky looked like he was caught between wanting to pass or shoot and fumbled the puck, negating what could have been a prime scoring chance. From that moment, he looked determined to shoot the puck every time he got a chance to do so. The former first overall pick ended up with six shots on goal and 10 shot attempts, which were career highs. His struggles seem well behind him at this point and with this type of volume shooting, goals will follow. Slafkovsky’s progression seems to coincide with Alex Newhook moving to the wing and Christian Dvorak returning to the line up. He’s not ready to drive a line on his own, and stable play at centre has benefitted him greatly.
- The powerplay continues to click, this time Mike Matheson capitalized on a chance from the high slot. It’s refreshing that this hasn’t been a focal talking point 15-games into the season.
- Xhekaj got on the board with a goal when the game was all but over. It’s always nice to get the first one out of the way.
Minuses:
- Jake Allen played well for the most part, but the Ilya Mikheyev goal is one that needs to be stopped. It turned out to be the game winner.
- Cole Caufield looks invisible at 5-on-5 and the production isn’t there. He has to get going because all his moments have come on the powerplay or in overtime. Caufield has just one goal at 5-on-5 and in came in the second game of the season.
- Another goal called back because of the stupid, ridiculous, annoying ability to challenge off-side. It wasn’t that long ago that this was a play that couldn’t be challenge… Was it THAT big an issue back then? Did we see an abundance of missed calls that led to goals? Can’t recall that being the case…
- Josh Anderson is never going to score again.
“Life’s hard, I always say winning is not loyal. You can do everything right doesn’t mean you’re going to win and right now Josh is doing a lot of good things,” said head coach Martin St Louis. “He’s just not winning right now so sometimes you just almost have to laugh at it a little bit and keep at it.”
The Montreal Canadiens’ next game is on Tuesday night when they host the Calgary Flames at the Bell Centre.
thehabsblog.com 
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