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Hockey Hainsight
No matter how good the opposing goaltender is or is not, if you only test him a handful of times, your odds of winning the game greatly decrease. As Wayne Gretzky or Michael Scott once said (whatever rocks your both); you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Through 40 minutes last night, the Canadiens had only put eight shots on Anthony Stolartz’s net. The Sportsnet’s analyst observed the Habs were doing a good job of waiting around, being true to their system and not worrying about how many shots they got, just hanging in there and staying in the game. If that’s indeed what the Canadiens are trying to do, they might lose some support. When Kent Hughes came in, he said ideally his team would be a fast offense first side. That’s definitely not what the Canadiens looked like last night.
Through the first 20 minutes of play, both teams combined for nine shots on net and they looked as if they were playing a ping pong game rather than a hockey match. If you missed the first frame, you didn’t miss anything really. Then, in the second, the Canadiens could only muster three shots while the Panthers tested Jake Allen 11 times and scored on the power play through a Luostarinen tipped shot after seven minutes of play. Thankfully for the Canadiens, Cole Caufield managed to bring everyone back to square one with a beautiful backhand shot from in close with the man advantage.
This would turn out to be the Habs’ only goal on the night as the Panthers added three more in the third including one in an empty net. On the shot clock, the two teams were tied in the last period, but by that time, the Panthers’ backup, Anthony Stolartz was at ease and confident only having surrendered a goal through 40 minutes. Confidence plays a big part in any sport and if you let a goaltender get comfortable, you’re going to regret it. It was just too much, too little, too late as the song goes. Any chance of a possible comeback was nipped in the bud when Joel Armia took a selfish penalty for removing an opponent's helmet.
It’s worth mentioning captain Nick Suzuki had yet another strong game in the faceoff department, winning over 64% of his draws. Meanwhile, Cole Caufield managed to score his ninth goal of the year, but it was once again on the power play and the five-on-five dry spell keeps going. Over the first 35 games of the season, Caufield has a 7.2 shooting percentage, that’s lower than Josh Anderson’s 7.7 %, even though it took the power forward so long to get his first goal of the season. Defensively, the silver lining, if you want to see it, is the Canadiens managed to keep Panthers’ captain Aleksander Barkov off the scoresheet, but you do not get any points in the standings for that…
With those two consecutive losses post-Christmas, the Canadiens are now five points out of a wildcard playoffs spot in the east. To be fair, nobody, aside perhaps from the players, believed Montreal would make the playoffs, but it’s still a shame to see the Canadiens have lost the momentum they had built in the first half of their annual Holiday Road trip.
The Canadiens won’t have much time to wallow in this 4-1 loss as they’ll be closing out the year with a duel against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena. Samuel Montembeault will be manning the net for the Habs.
As I’m writing these lines, Filip Mesar’s Slovakia is taking on Lane Hutson’s Team USA in the two sides’ last game of the group stage and after 20 minutes, the Americans are leading 3-1. Hutson got himself an assist on Brinley’s shorthanded marker. USA’s number one goaltender, Trey Augustine, is back in the USA’s net after dealing with an illness earlier this week which forced him to give way to Jacob Fowler for a couple of games. Now that he’s healthy though, Augustine is the man and unless things take a turn for the worst for him, Fowler should watch the rest of the tournament from the bench. As for Owen Beck and team Canada, they’ll get back on the ice at 13:30 ET playing Germany in their last group stage game. After that game, we’ll know who plays who in the quarterfinals which will be played on January 2nd, since all teams are getting a deserved day off for New Year’s Day.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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