At the end of any given night, no matter how badly the rest of the team plays, the fact is the Canadiens have the goaltender. Not A goaltender but THE goaltender. And that goaltender is playing like he was sent down to the Canadiens from a league far superior to the NHL, or perhaps sent from another world, a thought that might have crossed the minds of the Vancouver Canucks at times Wednesday night.
And just how other-worldly was Price in his 3-0 whitewashing of the Canucks. The first 27 minutes of the game was played almost entirely on his doorstep. Shots on goal 24-3. It was left it up to Price who was, forgive me for saying it – ‘other worldly’ again.
Forty-two saves for a shutout. Only three members of the Canucks failed to get a shot on him, all defensemen. Nine Canucks had three or more recorded shots. If you are a fan of the Corsi numbers the Canucks attempted 74 shots to the Canadiens 39. That is how territorially lopsided this game was. There’s only one goaltender in this world who can survive a night when his team mates are undergoing the beatdown being inflicted upon them by the Canucks.
But this is also the second straight game where the Canadiens have relied on Price for the victory. Saturday night when Price stopped 37 of 38 for the 2-1 win over Toronto. That’s one goal against in the last 80 shots he’s faced. For the record he now is 6-0-0, a 1.17GAA and a .964 save percentage. Other worldly.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
When the Canadiens lacked energy in the game against Toronto Saturday night it was blamed on the fifth game in eight nights. Understandable.
When the Canadiens showed a described lack of focus and execution against Vancouver it was being blamed on the long three day layoff. Now what?
Maybe it was the disrupted circadian rythms of hockey. If so, it’s back to normal this weekend with two in 24 hours once again.
CONSISTENCY
We’ve been saying since the beginning of the season that the fourth line has been the Canadiens best night-in nght-out. At times they seemed to be the only line that was operable in this game. The Galchenyuk line produced two of the three goals but there were a few wince creating moments from them too. When those given the job of selecting the three stars, named Torrey Mitchell as second behind Price. Mitchell scored the third goal, but the whole line was behind it starting with Brian Flynn grabbing up the turnover and sending it ahead to Phillip Danault and then that great pass for Mitchell. Mitchell has five goals now and the line is getting 12 or 13 minutes a game, which s rare for fourth liners..
THE OTHERS –
Hard to find anyone that played consistently through the sixty minutes. Jeff Petry I thought had a fairly steady game. Nathan Beaulieu seemed to be in an out all game; sometimes brilliant and there were also a couple of giveaways that Price head to deal with.
Did you notice that Shea Weber was plus-2 again? He is now a league-leading plus-12 after his first 10 games with the Canadiens. But, the Canadiens hold down the top four spots in that category now. Galchenyuk and Gallagher were also plus-2 and Beaulieu plus-1. Weber is plus-12, Beaulieu plus-10; Galchenyuk and Gallagher at plus-9, When a team is 9-0-1 to start the season, a statistic like that might have been considered predictable.
ONE FROM THE ROOM –
Reporter : Beaulieu called this game a “wake-up call” for the team. Do you see it that way?
Carey Price – I’m pretty awake.
Beaulieu called this game a “wake-up call” for the team. Do you see it that way?
Price: I’m pretty awake
MOVING ON
The Canadiens are in the fastest ten game start to their season in history with nineteen points in ten games. Last season, despite their record breaking 9-0-0 start, they lost the tenth game out in Vancouver and finished the segment with 18 points.
The Canadiens practice tomorrow morning before their charter to Columbus. They’ll play the Blue Jackets Friday night with Al Montoya in goal and back home against Flyers on Saturday.
The biggest problem this team continues to have, and has had for most of Therrien’s time as coach, is that they are terrible at breakouts. I don’t know where to find stats on icings, but the eye test suggests we ice the puck *a lot*. One way of demonstrating how bad we are at breakouts is looking at faceoffs, where Montreal is tied with Detroit for 2nd most defensive zone faceoffs (242, Calagary is first with 261) and is 4th by percentage – 36.4 of all Mtl faceoffs are in the defensive zone, compared to just 26.6 in the offensive (also 4th last) and 36.9 neutral zone (13th).
While those stats don’t directly show that we ice the puck a lot or struggle with breakouts, it’s pretty obvious. There’s a couple reasons for this, one of which is strategy, but another is player personnel – outside of the Markov-Petry pairing, we don’t have any puck moving defensemen. Weber is a good player, but he is not a good puck mover, unlike Subban. So while we’ve upgraded our forwards and not necessarily upgraded or downgraded our defense, the switch from Subban to Weber is most definitely a step backwards on breakouts, and Beaulieu hasn’t been able to compensate for it. If Markov was 27 instead of 37, it wouldn’t matter, as he would be doing that on the top pairing with Petry filling the role on the 2nd, but Markov’s legs are gone.
As a result, it doesn’t surprise me at all that Bergevin is reportedly looking for a top-4 D. That is, right now, our biggest weakness and it is putting unnecessary levels of pressure on our goalies.
Kevin, great commentary on our Defensive Zone issues. On top of those face offs in our end is how many do we actually win. Continuing along into the Bergevin era we have failed to: 1) land a bonafide true #1 Centre – don’t get me wrong I love Gally27 and he may turn into a premiere centre for this team but until he rules in the face off circle 2) we lose way too many face offs leading to loss of possession – but not one thing has been done other than to weaken the position. When is Bergevin going to heed our stat’s guys numbers and bring Adam Oates into the fold to teach our centres here and on the farm how to dominate at the dot?
We got rid of the wrong centre man last June. DD is pathetic out there. I inwardly cringe watching him fall down trying to win a draw or be cleanly beaten in the Offensive end while on the PP.
As usual the management and coaching of this team continue to miss “Warning Signals”. Therrien in particular is so stubborn he refuses to use the strength of this team in his tactics. As Kevin noted actually getting the puck out of our end and maintain possession is a huge challenge. I raised this last year that we had 3 guys that carry the puck exceptionally well but MT refuses to make use of them. This year I thought that there was some change early in the schedule. You had Petry and Beaulieau bringing it up and setting up shop. I first thought this was an early influence by Muller. But it changed again and now we’re back to Intentional Icing the Puck aka Maybe after the next face off in our zone we’ll get it out cleanly this time….or not. You’d think this was some Men’s Beer Leaguers trying to move the puck.
Actions: 1) Get Adam Oates onboard immediately 2) Get our “Associate” Coach Kirk Muller more involved or completely take over the Offensive duties including the PP to turn this around and get that Beer League Coach of ours further into the background.