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In Hainsight: From Bad to Worse in the Sunshine State |
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Follow me @KarineHains for all updates about the Montreal Canadiens and women's hockey
The Panthers are having a bad season, but nowhere near bad enough to struggle against a Canadiens’ team that seems to be stuck in neutral these days. The Florida outfit wasted no time taking the lead through captain Aleksander Barkov less than 3 minutes in and after 15 minutes, he had a hat trick to his name. The Habs did try to fight back, at least in the first, both Xhekaj and Anderson scored power play goals and at the end of 20 minutes, it was 3-2 Florida.
The rest of the game belonged to the Cats though as they went on to add 4 more goals, including 2 on the power play as the Canadiens’ penalty kill once again struggled against a well-oiled man-advantage unit allowing 3 goals on 6 occasions.
The Habs’ struggle of late has coincided with Sean Monahan’s absence. Since the center went down to a lower-body injury on December 6, the Canadiens have only managed to score 2 goals or less in every game. That’s not a lack of puck luck, that’s proof that you cannot just rely on a single line to do all the scoring. Without Monahan, coach Marty St-Louis has struggled to find a second line worthy of the name and as a result, the opposition only had to counter the Caufield-Suzuki-Dach line to win. If the plan is still to trade Monahan at the deadline, and I believe it is, Habs fans better get used to this kind of game. It will be painful for the remainder of the season, but it should pay off in the long run.
Yesterday marked Brendan Gallagher’s return from injury and while he didn’t find his way on the scoresheet, he did make his presence felt. As always, the alternate captain battled hard and got under the opponent’s skin, he even handed up dropping the gloves in a lost cause. Clearly, he wasn’t trying to change his team’s fortune on the night by doing so, but that was just Gallagher telling his teammates how much he hates to lose. His line with Slafkovsky and Dvorak was the best on the night, even though that’s not much.
In the grand scheme of things though, that 7-2 loss is nothing compared to the potential loss suffered in the last few minutes of the game as Kaiden Guhle left the game. As always, the blueliner played a hard and gritty game. As he battled Barkov in the corner, both players fell to the ice and Guhle’s right leg rolled under him. Guhle stayed down and left the game, which made sense with a 7-2 score line. St-Louis had no update on the young defenseman’s health when he met with the media post game.
The Canadiens will be playing their last game of the year tomorrow in Washington as we’ll get ready to ring in the new year. Speaking of the new year, January 1st will be the anniversary of Jonathan Drouin’s last goal…I know, he’s been injured a lot but still…that’s quite a feat and I can’t help but remember a certain anniversary from 2012…
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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