Habs blow lead as Panthers win, John Scott recalled & McCarron sent down (Habs)

Habs

Habs blow lead as Panthers win, John Scott recalled & McCarron sent down

By Jennifer B Cutler

Apr 4, 2016 • 7:21 am

0comment-bubble

Saturday’s 4-3 loss by the Montreal Canadiens to the Florida Panthers may have been a bitter pill to swallow for the players and coaches if it happened earlier in the season. The Canadiens started the game strong and were leading the game 3-0 before they let Aleksander Barkov and the Panthers complete a full comeback. In a twisted way, some fans were relieved that the Canadiens lost in regulation so as to have better chances at a higher draft pick yet were pleased that the Canadiens scored three goals and a contribution from 3 different lines. A win-win situation so to speak.

The game marked Brendan Gallagher and Daniel Carr’s return to action for the first time since January and they provided a definite boost to the lineup. Gallagher scored in the first period and fit right back in with line-mates Max Pacioretty and Alex Galchenyuk. His leadership and enthusiasm on and off the ice is contagious and was certainly missed while he was out of the lineup. Carr played a very effective 11:54 minutes of hockey, driving to the net and forechecking hard with line-mates Phillip Danault and Michael McCarron.

David Desharnais continued to display that given the appropriate role he can succeed in the NHL. Desharnais played less than 13 minutes in the game and scored the second goal of the game playing with Paul Byron and Sven Andrighetto. Torrey Mitchell scored his career high 11th goal of the season off of a terrific pass and effort by Lars Eller. With the Canadiens up 3-0 midway through the game, the line of Barkov, Jaromir Jagr and Jonathan Huberdeau came alive and took over the game. Barkov scored two goals including the game winner while his linemates had one a piece. The Canadiens simply had no answer for them and were passengers when the Barkov line was on the ice. It certainly did not help that the Canadiens continued to get hit by the injury bug as Brett Lernout suffered a lower body injury in his first NHL game and so the Canadiens had to play with 5 defencemen for much of the game. Not to mention that Greg Pateryn took a puck to the face and so the Canadiens were actually down to four defencemen for part of the third period as he was being tended to. Post-game, Therrien alluded to how difficult all of the injuries have been for his group (comments courtesy of Canadiens.com):

“Losing another defenseman was definitely taxing on our group. Everything was under control, but with the loss of Lernout and then Pateryn for a short time, we asked a lot of our defensemen. Even our veterans like Markov and Emelin played way too many minutes. We lost some energy because of that. Tonight’s circumstances made things a little more difficult, for sure.…

On Sunday, the Canadiens made the somewhat curious roster move:

The Canadiens are doing the honourable thing in bringing up Scott to close out the season and perhaps his NHL career. Scott’s year has been well recorded and a few games with the Canadiens will give his movie a greater Hollywood ending than finishing with the Ice Caps. The less honourable part of this is demoting McCarron after management had told him he would finish the season with the Canadiens.

Scott has already joined his teammates this morning:

The lines at practice on Monday are:

Look for Stefan Matteau, Mike Brown and Jacob De La Rose to be healthy scratches in tomorrow’s rematch with the Panthers at the Bell Centre. Carr is already being promoted to the second line while Byron and Mitchell get bounced down to the fourth. Ryan Johnston was called up from the St. John’s Ice Caps on an emergency basis yesterday and it appears that he will be the 15th defenceman to play for the Canadiens tomorrow night as Lernout did not practice. The defensive pairings are:

Cheers & follow along!

Show Comments
Loading...
Loading...
0
Show comments for this article