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Battle of the Prayer Plays |
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Like broken records, the media put the spotlight on THE trade again 2 years and 8 months down the line...I think everything's been said about that and more importantly, this match-up was Shea Weber's 900th career game and no one can say he hasn't had a great career so far.
In 900 games, Weber has racked up 198 goals and 324 assists for 522 points. 218 of those points came on the power play, including 97 goals. There's no doubt that Weber has quite the slapper but for it to be useful, his team needs to open up shooting lines for him. Hopefully, the Habs will soon manage to remember how to play with the man advantage.
When the Habs touched the ice tonight, they hadn't played since Saturday night and it definitely showed. They looked as rusty as can be and were badly dominated in the first frame, the Preds literally peppering Price's net with shots. Thankfully, the Tricolore's star net minder had come to play and stopped each and every shot. Tonight was also the first game of the new look 4th line; Deslauriers-Thompson-Weise and it wasn't the best start for them. The centre man lost the very first face-off he took as a Montreal Canadien and it lead to a Predators' scoring chance. While that line did look slow at time they did manage to get perhaps the best scoring chance for the Habs in the dying seconds of the first. Thompson made a great defensive play in his zone sending Weise and Deslauriers forward, the later took a shot that Rinne neutralized. At the buzzer, the Preds had 16 shots to the Habs' 8.
Claude Julien must have been livid after that first period because his team came out fighting in the second. Within the first 5 minutes, the Habs had 10 shots on goal and sure put Rinne to the test with some dangerous ones but the Finn was unbeatable. Midway through the 20 minutes, Price gave up the first goal of the match to Ryan Hartman who was all too happy to get that monkey off his pack (he hadn't score since December 13th). The rest of the period was swiftly played and featured plenty of attack on both sides but the score remained 1-0 Preds while the Habs had taken over shots wise 29-27.
5 minutes into the last 20, Tomas Tatar gave a little bit of hope to Habs nation by putting his team on the board with assists from Andrew Shaw and Jordie Benn and it looked like the Canadiens might just be able to turn the tide. Well, it looked like that for just over 3 minutes as the newly acquired Brian Boyle put the Preds ahead on a very nice play by Roman Josi and PK Subban, the Preds defensemen both made slick no look back passes and Boyle let it rip. Carey Price looked like he wanted to get that one back as he was beaten from quite far out but considering that he registered 35 saves in the game and had a .921 save percentage, it's hard to blame him. A couple of minutes later, Victor Arvidsson made it 3-1 Preds and that was all she wrote, Nashville wasn't really worried for the rest of the game. Kudos to Rinne, he played an excellent game.
Through 60 minutes, both team got 3 penalties and not a single man advantage goal was scored. Both special units looked disorganized and struggled to create much of anything...In fact, for once, it was nice to see the Habs' opponent lose momentum on the power play. After the Sainte-Flanelle successfully killed Dale Weise's 2 minutes high sticking penalty, Tatar scored the only Canadiens' goal. Shakira sang that Hips Don't Lie but the PP stats don't either and it was without surprise that powerless units were deployed, in short, the best chance to get a PP goal out there was probably to say a prayer.
As for our 4th line, they managed to get 6 shots on goal tonight and landed 3 hits. Weise and Deslauriers both saw just over 10 minutes of action while Thompson had over 12:00 being used on the PK. Poor Victor Mete had a couple of nice looks on net again tonight but even when it looked like he could just push the puck in a near empty net, he didn't manage to convert. His first career goal can't come soon enough, otherwise his confidence might eventually plummet.
On the positive side, Tatar took 7 shots tonight and looked as committed as ever. Speaking of committed, it was very nice to hear Pierre Houde on RDS say: "This was thanks to Drouin's determination". Number 92 didn't have a perfect game, far from it (the turnover that lead to the first goal was just atrocious) but it's refreshing to see him insist on some plays.
In the end though, the fact remains that the Habs failed to inflict a fourth consecutive loss to the Preds tonight and now have a 2 games losing streak going...Things will not be easier on Saturday night either though as they'll face the Tampa Lightning who are just in a class of their own this season (they destroyed the Stars 6-0 tonight and Vassilevskyi has now tied Bishop with most shutout in franchise history with 17), they lead the league with 90 points, 15 more than the Sharks who are currently second.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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