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Pregame: Canadiens vs Lightning |
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Follow me @KarineHains for all updates about the Montreal Canadiens and women's hockey
The Canadiens practiced this morning at Amalie arena and the line-up confirmed that as I expected yesterday, Chris Wideman will be making way for Justin Barron tonight. The freshly recalled blueline will be playing alongside Jordan Harris on the third pairing.
Up front, Nick Suzuki will no doubt be thrilled to see Cole Caufield back on his left side while Joel Armia stays on his right. This means that Jonathan Drouin returns to Kirby Dach’s right on the 2nd line which will be completed by Mike Hoffman. The bottom 6 remains unchanged from last game as Dvorak will be centering the Slafkovsky, Anderson duo while Pezzetta, Evans and Richard will be forming the 4th line. In other words, Evgeni Dadonov is once again the odd man out.
Tonight’s game will be the first time in Canadiens’ history that the team has used 5 rookies on the blue line, and it will be interesting to see if newcomer Justin Barron gets some power play time. Montreal’s man advantage has really been struggling of late and of Barron’s 7 goals in the NHL 5 were scored on the power play.
The team issued some medical updates this morning, Brendan Gallagher has traveled with the team and practiced in a regular jersey today although he won’t be playing. Sean Monahan, who’s dealing with a lower body injury has skated for the first time this morning in Brossard. David Savard’s getting better from his upper-body injury and also skated in Brossard today. As for Mike Matheson, he’s dealing with a new upper-body injury, a different one that delayed his start to the season, and he’ll be reevaluated when the team returns to Montreal. Finally, Paul Byron who’s been out for ages has been getting a lot better of late and he’ll be closely monitored in the coming weeks. Once those players are back into shape, St-Louis will have a lot of roster decisions to make…but I dearly hope the focus will nevertheless remain on development.
The puck is set to drop at 7:00 PM in Tampa tonight, and if you fancy a bit of World Junior Championship action Filip Mesar’s Slovakia will be taking on Lane Hutson’s USA at 16:00 ET and Joshua Roy’s Canada will be trying to make amends facing Germany at 18:30 ET after losing 5-2 to the Czechs in their first game. This won’t be a walk in the park for the Canadians though as Germany’s goaltender was excellent in yesterday’s game against Sweden.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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