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Game 8: Canadiens vs Blues AKA Sweeping the Champs |
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There it was, the first matinee game of the season for the Canadiens in St-Louis against the defending cup champions. Joel Armia left the warm-up with a small ailment and thus allowed Jordan Weal to get his spot back in the line-up, while Folin took Fleury’s spot since he is also dealing with a small injury. Considering that the Habs had beaten the Blues 6-3 last Saturday, most everyone expected the champs to come out swinging and they kind of did. The Canadiens did draw first blood when Jordan Weal scored on the power play with helpers from Domi and Tatar but the Blues took only just over a minute to tie things up when Jaden Schwartz gathered a rebound from the boards to flick it behind Price. After one, the score was tied, but the Blues were dominating shots wise (11-8), hits wise (11-4), faceoff wise (9-7) and takeaways wise (4-3).
The tide turned 6 seconds in the second frame though when Jake Allen decided to give Brendan Gallagher his best Father Christmas impression and St-Louis was never the same after that. Of course, the Blues’ lack of discipline really didn’t help matters since the Canadiens got their second power play marker of the game when Drouin buried a goal to finish a tic-tac-toe initiated by Weber and Kotkaniemi. It was really refreshing to see the youngster on the power play and looking oh so very comfortable out there.
Speaking of youngsters, Nick Suzuki got his second goal in as many game by cruising in the slot and firing the puck past Jake Allen off a Nate Thompson pass from behind the net to make it 4-1. While Suzuki was playing with the 4th line alongside Thompson and Nick Cousins, it has to be said that this line is starting to click and is doing some very good work. Suzuki saw 15:30 seconds of ice-time including 4:13 on the power play. Those are some pretty impressive numbers for him, Max Domi played 15:29 and had the exact same amount of power play time. However, it’s worth mentioning that even with a great start to the season, Jonathan Drouin was once more the least used forward by Claude Julien with 12:45 of ice time. While Carey Price had an easy night against the Wild on Thursday, he was much busier today and looked like his good old self making the all important saves at the right moments:
After 40 minutes, 10 different Habs players had at least a point and it looked like the matter was settled already, the Blues would not be coming back in this one. It’s not that they didn’t try, they did pull the goalie for a sixth skater with plenty of time left but David Perron was the only one who was able to beat Price making it 4-2 before Shea Weber wrapped things up with an empty netter for his 1st goal of the season.
I said on Thursday that the Canadiens had only beaten the poor Wild but this 5-2 win over the defending champs on the road is something else! Carey Price (.941 save percentage) was called upon time and time again and stood tall, the defensive coverage was much better, the penalty kill was flawless in 6 minutes, the power play scored twice in 5 opportunities and well, Jake Allen was…bad to say the least (20 saves on 24 shots).
Our Habs won’t have time to celebrate much as they’ll be taking on the Wild tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 PM. Claude Julien said yesterday that Kinkaid would see some action this weekend so one can assume that the back-up will be in net to face Minnesota. It’s too early to know if Armia will be available and given how well Folin played today, it would be surprising to see Fleury back in the line-up right away.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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