The Montreal Canadiens played their worst game of the season and got dominated by the Boston Bruins 5-2 Saturday night to begin a five game road trip.
The situation wasn’t ideal, Boston played just twice last week while Montreal was saddled with a heavy schedule of four games. Last Saturday’s loss was also still fresh on the minds of the Bruins players who were hungry for revenge.
There was some room for optimism early in the game with head coach Martin St Louis putting the lines into a blender. Cole Caufield was back with Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky finally had Sean Monahan has his center, something many people had be clamoring for.
But the Bruins stepped on the Canadiens right from puck drop and never slowed down. It was 60-minutes of domination and midway through the game, it looked like Montreal’s players couldn’t wait for the game to end.
This, on a Saturday night, in Boston against the rival Bruins with their fathers in the crowd as part of the annual “Dad’s Trip.” Ouff…
“Boston was strong tonight, I thought tonight it’s not that we didn’t work hard, we worked badly,” said St Louis in his post game comments. “And I thought we were soft a bit as well.”
Pluses:
- Juraj Slafkovsky had a goal and an assist. Good release on his goal and didn’t waste time getting his shot off when sent a pass from Nick Suzuki. It wasn’t his strongest game, but at least the production was there.
- Jake Allen… If not for him, Bruins could have beat the Habs by a touchdown and a field goal on Grey Cup weekend.
- Gustav Lindstrom landed a thunderous open ice hit on Matt Proitas.
- Nobody will be talking about the Habs game on Monday, the talk of the town will be the Montreal Alouettes
- They get to hide on the road for the next week and a half.
Minuses:
- Soft in every area.
- Sleeping to start the game, Boston went to the first intermission with a 2-0 lead and had 27-shot attempts at 5-on-5 to go with six high danger chances.
- Very little in the physicality department, it didn’t feel like a rivalry game. That’s what happens when one team is chasing the other team all over the ice.
- None of the new lines clicked, yes it’s just one game.
- Josh Anderson will never score again.
Montreal’s next match up will be a late one out on the west coast when the Canadiens take on the Anaheim Ducks.
thehabsblog.com 
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