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At least there was emotion tonight, there were hits, comebacks, beautiful saves and a rollercoaster of a game but at the end of the day, the Canadiens still lost. Halfway through the first the Habs were already in a 2-0 hole thanks to bad defensive coverage and a couple of penalties (although I will say that I do not believe the charging one assessed to Kotkaniemi was the right call).
Montreal looked completely stunned for most of the first until Shea Weber scored his 3rd of the year. It was a frustrating period for the Habs and Josh Anderson showed it taking a roughing penalty for a late hit after the buzzer.
While Montreal killed the Anderson penalty, Weber got a 4-minute for high sticking and Carey Price let a shot from the blue line squeeze in between his pads. It’s a shame because tonight, Price has made quite a few great saves tonight, but he also let in 2 bad goals…without the aforementioned great saves though, that game wouldn’t have reached overtime.
At 3-1 Ottawa, Jonathan Drouin finally managed to score his second goal of the year on a breakaway and the captain stood tall by scoring with a rocket from the blue line to tie things up. Just like that, everyone was back to square one and Toffoli gave the Habs the lead for the first time early in the 3rd, but it only took a couple of minutes for the Sens to come back thanks to a Brady Tkachuk goal that shouldn’t have gone it.
In the dying seconds of the 3rd, Gallagher thought he had given the win to the Canadiens but the goal was waived off for goaltender interference. In his post game comments, Gallagher was positively fuming. Quite understandable since the Habs went on to lose in the shootout, final score Ottawa: 5 Montreal: 4. I’m no referee, but it sure looked like Murray had time to get back in position before the goal went in…
Once again, this team did not look ready, it was shellshocked early and just struggled to get its senses back. On the bright side, Weber had a much better game today, scoring 2 goals, had 3 shots on goal, 5 that missed the net, 4 blocked shots and 4 hits, so we can’t fault him tonight.
For once, Claude Julien tried to change things up a bit in the 3rd, at one point he put Weber and Petry together on the ice at 5 on 5, that went fine but when it came Chiarot and Edmundson together, it wasn’t reassuring to say the least. There were a couple of mind-boggling decisions in the OT period, at one stage, the Habs had a faceoff in Ottawa’s zone and the Canadiens didn’t have a centre on the ice. Julien sent Drouin and Toffoli, the draw was lost, and another opportunity was wasted.
The Canadiens will now travel to Winnipeg to play against the Jets on Thursday night at 8:00. If they play like they did at the start of this game, they’ll be obliterated by the Jets’ attack, if they play like they did in the 3rd, we could be in for a very good hockey game. I think it’s fair to say though that the Senators are fast becoming this year’s Red Wings for the Canadiens and they’ll have to face them 6 more times…
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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