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Tonight, the Canadiens played a perfect first period. They sent lots of shots to Fleury’s net and bounced on the rebounds, which is the key when attempting to counter the Flower Power. They laid on a ton of big hits, avoided giveaways and by the end of the first, it was 2-0 Habs thanks to Joel Armia and Tyler Toffoli (who’s got an 8-game point streak) and lead 12-4 in shots.
In the second though, the Canadiens were on their heels and spent much of it defending, only taking 4 shots on goals. Thankfully, Paul Byron used his speed to get away and score a masterful breakaway goal, sending the puck top shelf above a laying down Fleury to make it 3-1. A minute later though, the Knights were breaking through with a goal off a face-off which Price just couldn’t spot through traffic.
With a 2-goal lead to start the third, you could almost hear Habs nation hyperventilate in front of their TV and quite rightly so as those were 20 of the most stressful minutes of hockey I’ve lived through. With just over 5 minutes to go, the Knights scored to get within one after an insanely bad icing by Joel Edmundson while a dead-tired Suzuki was in dire need of a change. Montreal did manage to hang on for the 3-2 win though and head back to Montreal tied at 1-1, just like they wanted.
While I did hate the bad Edmundson icing, he did have 2 assists tonight and the Canadiens’ blue line did insane work. Having Jeff Petry back in the fold was a much-needed boost, he had an assist and two blocked shots. It’s not all about the points though, Shea Weber was majestic with 6 blocked shots and 7 hits while Ben Chiarot blocked 3 shots and landed 9 big hits.
As for Carey Price, well, what can I say? He was spectacular in net and a few times, the Vegas crowd cheered as if Vegas had scored, but clearly, they didn’t take playoffs Price into account. With a .935 save percentage, Carey could have dished out another couple of winks tonight. If the Habs’ marketing team is reading this, I need a then and now t-shirt of both winks, then and now, 1993 and 2021, Roy and Price, get on with it!
Up front, plenty of the forwards landed more hits than they normally do, Nick Suzuki had 6, Toffoli 4 and Danault 3. Kotkaniemi got his first ever playoffs assist and Caufield added yet another point to his account. It was a great team effort and if the Habs can play like this for the rest of the series, this one is going to be a real battle in the tranches.
I think it’s worth mentioning that the Golden Knights didn’t get a single penalty tonight even though they really could have done. The no call on Karlsson when he stamped Edmundson face first in the boards in the dying minutes was particularly annoying. At least the refs had the decency to blow the whistle.
Game 3 will take place in Montreal at 8:00 PM on Friday night and the Habs will look to keep their new scoring streak lead going. It will be interesting to see if Chandler Stephenson will be back in the Vegas line-up as they really missed him tonight, he’s their 1st centre and is key in Stone and Pacioretty’s productions.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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