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Elimination Day?

August 7, 2020, 12:25 PM ET [434 Comments]
Karine Hains
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The puck will drop on game 4 of the Montreal-Pittsburgh series in less than 4 hours. After a huge team win on Wednesday, the Canadiens will try to finish the job by winning a 3rd game. Both coaches spoke to the medias today and surprisingly enough, both were willing to talk about their line-up.

Unsurprisingly, with his Penguins facing elimination, Mike Sullivan has decided that it was time to give the net to Tristan Jarry. While Jarry and Murray are the same age, the later has got a lot more experience in the play-offs and not so long ago, he was the one who ejected Marc-André Fleury from the Pittsburgh net. That was back in the 2016 playoffs, 4 years later, its his turn to make way for another goaltender. While Murray does have 2 Stanley Cup to his name, he’s also had quite a few injuries in the last few years and his number this season weren’t what they once were. He finished the season with a .899 save percentage while Jarry had a .921 and on the goal against average front, Murray stood at 2.87 and Jarry at 2.43. To be fair, Murray’s numbers have been better in the last 3 games against Montreal but Sullivan is running out of time and he needs to do something to shake his team up.

On the Montreal side, Claude Julien confirmed that if Jake Evans cannot play (it seems pretty much a certainty at this point), Alex Belzile will be taking his spot in the line-up. Belzile suited up for the exhibition game against Toronto and left the game with an injury. Julien feels Belzile is a hard worker and will be in a position to help the team. The coach refused to confirm if he’d revert to his usual lines of if the lines we saw in the last part of game 3 would be used from the get got. Pat Hickey jokingly asked Julien if he thought about doing what Sullivan is doing by changing his goalie and he replied: “Not yet. Goaltender’s gonna stay the same”, prompting some chuckles all around.

I’m glad Julien isn’t bringing Jordan Weal back in but I would have liked to see Ryan Poehling draw in. No disrespect to Belzile and I do believe Julien when he says he’s a hard worker, but since the coach has been saying that he wants 4 talented lines out there, it would have made sense to put in the former first round pick. I know, Poehling’s first game with a hat-trick and a shootout goal was an anomaly but he’s still more talented than Belzile and might have been a better fit for poor Max Domi who is probably dying to get some skill on his wings.

And Julien is sticking with youth:

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Drouin-Kotkaniemi-Armia
Byron-Danault-Lehkonen
Weise-Domi-Belzile
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Lindgren

Puck drop is at 16:00, if you are working, make-up an excuse for the boss, you do not want to miss what could be the last game of this series. Game 5, if necessary, will take place tomorrow but the league has yet to reveal the start time. Before that though, there’s plenty more of hockey to watch since the Oilers, the Leafs and the Wild will all try to avoid elimination after the Habs’ game... and if you’re bored until 16:00, you can tune in to see the Islanders try to put down the Panther and the Coyotes try to do the same to the Preds.
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