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Habs Beaten By Vasilevskiy + Consistency Still Work In Progress... |
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The Canadiens came into the game with a tall order. It’s never a easy game for the Habs against the Lightning in the Stamkos/Kucherov era, but with the way the Canadiens have played this year there was reason for optimism this game.
Actually, after Domi put the Habs up 1-0 less than a minute into the game there was very good reason for optimism. But the Canadiens found themselves down 2-1 heading into the intermission on TBL goals from Stamkos and Miller. The Bolts outworked the Habs this period as well with shot totals of 18-12.
The Habs battled hard in the 2nd period and crushed the Bolts in shots, 17-7, but Vasilevskiy was the difference tonight as he snuffed out many high quality scoring opportunities the Habs put on net. The period was scoreless heading into the 3rd and I daresay I was still quite optimistic of the Habs chances of coming back in this one.
But, the 3rd period saw an early Stamkos goal less than a minute in seal their fate as after that goal the Bolts reverted to a defensive game to put the game away before Gourde scored with 4 minutes remaining to put the game on ice.
Price played well, but it was another sub .900 SP% (.889 SP% to be exact) game for him and it’s tough to win without league average (.908 SP%) goaltending…
THAT SAID…..
It was not a good game for Ouellet, Drouin, Armia, and Juulsen defensively. Fancy stats show that these players were at the bottom in CF% on the team tonight despite all of them except Ouellet starting most of their shifts in the Offensive Zone.
It was really easy to see that Juulsen struggled last night from the eye test perspective and the +/- (yes, I do care about that despite others saying its useless). Juulsen and Drouin finished with -3 each while Ouellet had a -2 and Armia finished -1. These players struggled last night and it showed, although Drouin was a part of some quality scoring chances. Problem was that Drouin struggled handling the puck all night as it appeared the nerves of playing against his old team along with expectations of his own team weighed heavy.
The Habs have been playing well for sure, but now they have alternated wins and losses for 7 straight games now and one has to wonder if this is a sign of things to come. The Canadiens are competing with anyone, when they use their speed, but they definitely haven’t found consistency in the attack yet. The loss of Byron is affecting the team negatively and one has to wonder about Juulsen’s injury and how thats impacting his game. We are still seeing a bit of a up and down Carey Price as well, although this game he had some defensive breakdowns lead to goals and you can’t hold other people’s play against him.
All in all, maybe 4-1 looks worse than the game actually was for the Habs but a loss is a loss and the Habs need to win 55%+ of their games to hit playoffs and going 3-3-1 with 3 losses to division rivals is cause for concern at the moment. There is no time to sit and say it’s early or whatever pressure relieving cliche comes to mind. The Habs are a pretty good, young team and this is the kind of season that can really build confidence and help shape careers.
The next stretch of games will not be easy either so the choice is to buckle down, put on your Gallagher hat, and get to work against NYI, NYR, BUFF, VGK, EDM, CAL, and VAN or risk chasing for the rest of the season when you don’t really have to. It’s very easy to see the Canadiens winning 4-5 of these games, but games are played on the ice and the Habs have already learned they can not afford to take any opponent lightly this season. There are some surprises so far this year and there are a lot of teams that are finding the confidence to win. The Canadiens must believe in themselves and translate that into effort on the ice.
I think they can do that but the effort must be consistent to do so.
Go Habs Go
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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