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It was a rare light week on the schedule for the Habs thanks to the holiday break.  However, they made the most of their limited action, picking up three of four points including one of their better comebacks of the season.

The Week That Was

Dec. 23: Canadiens 6, Bruins 2 – Samuel Blais opened the scoring but Boston scored twice before the first ended including a late power play goal from Alex Steeves.  Ivan Demidov tied it in the second period and the game looked like it would be close heading into the third.  However, Montreal found another gear, scoring twice on a two-man advantage and four times overall to turn a tight game into a rout to put them on the break on a high note.

Dec. 27: Lightning 5, Canadiens 4 (SO) – The Habs carried the play in the first period but couldn’t score.  Then, they had a series of bad bounces while Tampa Bay got going, resulting in a three-goal deficit heading into the third.  But Montreal didn’t relent, even after the Lightning scored quickly after the Habs got on the board.  From there, they scored three unanswered, including Juraj Slafkovsky’s second of the game with four seconds left to send the game to overtime.  The Canadiens then played keep-away to play for the shootout and once again, they lost.  Perhaps a change back to an attack strategy might be worthwhile?  But still, a well-earned point all things considered.

StatPack

Skaters:

#	Player	GP	G	A	+/-	PIMS	SOG	ATOI
8	Mike Matheson	2	0	1	-1	0	5	25:06
11	Brendan Gallagher	2	0	0	+1	2	3	14:33
13	Cole Caufield	2	1	1	+2	0	7	20:47
14	Nick Suzuki	2	1	1	+2	0	2	23:05
17	Josh Anderson	2	0	0	-2	7	5	15:10
20	Juraj Slafkovsky	2	3	2	+2	16	7	19:23
24	Phillip Danault	2	0	0	-1	0	2	16:11
27	Samuel Blais	2	1	0	+1	0	1	8:46
45	Alexandre Carrier	2	0	0	+1	0	2	19:32
47	Jayden Struble	2	0	0	+1	0	0	9:48
48	Lane Hutson	2	0	4	+5	0	5	25:29
53	Noah Dobson	2	1	4	E	0	5	25:47
72	Arber Xhekaj	2	0	0	-1	10	2	7:29
76	Zachary Bolduc	2	1	0	+1	0	4	17:19
85	Alexandre Texier	2	0	0	+1	2	2	9:27
90	Joe Veleno	2	0	0	-1	0	2	11:10
91	Oliver Kapanen	2	0	1	+2	0	7	16:41
93	Ivan Demidov	2	2	2	+3	2	4	16:17

Goalies:

#	Player	Record	GAA	SV%	SO
32	Jacob Fowler	1-0-1	2.92	.880	0

Shootout – Skaters:

#	Player	G/ATT
13	Cole Caufield	0/1
93	Ivan Demidov	0/1

Shootout – Goalies:

#	Player	SVS/SF
32	Jacob Fowler	1/3

Team Leaders:

Goals: Cole Caufield (18)
Assists: Nick Suzuki (31)
Points: Nick Suzuki (42)
+/-: Nick Suzuki (+12)
PIMS: Arber Xhekaj (69)
Shots: Cole Caufield (105)

News And Notes

– With his game in Boston, Jacob Fowler made his fifth appearance of the season.  In doing so, he reached $50,000 of his $80,000 in games-played bonuses this season.  If the Habs remain in LTIR for the rest of the season, that will be deducted off their spending limit next season while if they’re able to get out of LTIR and bank enough cap space in the second half, they could apply it toward this season’s cap number.

– Samuel Montembeault was recalled from his conditioning stint.  He remained on Montreal’s active roster while on assignment so his recall didn’t necessitate any other moves.

– Jake Evans will miss four to six weeks with the lower-body injury sustained last weekend against Pittsburgh.  A week of that has already elapsed but the best-case scenario is a return in mid-to-late January.

Last Game’s Lines:

Caufield – Suzuki – Bolduc
Slafkovsky – Kapanen – Demidov
Texier – Danault – Anderson
Blais – Veleno – Gallagher

Matheson – Dobson
Hutson – Carrier
Xhekaj – Struble

The Week Ahead

Tuesday at Florida – For the second straight game on this leg of the road trip, the Habs will get a team on the back half of a back-to-back.  They remain without their top two forwards (although Matthew Tkachuk has resumed skating, at least, with the hopes of playing in the Winter Classic on Friday) but despite that, they’re still in the middle of the pack offensively.  Brad Marchand leads the way offensively while Sam Reinhart is also over a point per game.  Former Hab Jeff Petry is playing a regular role on the third pairing for the Panthers but is averaging a career-low 14:35 per game.

Thursday at Carolina – The Hurricanes continue to be a score-by-committee team and it keeps working for them.  They only have one player with 30 points but 13 others are in double digits.  Carolina is currently without a pair of key players in defenceman Jaccob Slavin and winger Seth Jarvis.  Meanwhile, former Hab Jesperi Kotkaniemi hasn’t scored in nearly two months and was reportedly offered to Los Angeles for Phillip Danault before the Habs traded for him.

Saturday at St. Louis – The Blues have been one of the bigger disappointments this season thanks to an offence that isn’t firing and goaltending (especially from Jordan Binnington) that has struggled mightily.  Not a good combination.  Robert Thomas is the only player with more than 22 points while offseason trade target Jordan Kyrou has been quiet with eight goals and eight assists in 29 games.  Checking in on former Hab Logan Mailloux, he has just one goal and one assist in 26 NHL games this season.

Sunday at Dallas – While it’s not entirely fair to say that the Stars are a top-heavy team, they have three high-end producers, headlined by Mikko Rantanen and a pair of 20-goal scorers in Jason Robertson (seemingly battling Cole Caufield for a back-roster spot at the Olympics) and Wyatt Johnston.  Meanwhile, they have one of the best team save percentages league-wide with Casey DeSmith, their backup, checking in at a strong .915.

Final Thought

While Martin St. Louis opted to have Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble play both games this week, the leash was incredibly tight.  Xhekaj didn’t make it to eight minutes in either one of them while Struble averaged less than ten.  Having one blueliner playing that little is difficult to manage.  Having two at that level of ice time is a problem, especially at a point in the season when the schedule is about to get incredibly compressed once again.

So far, Adam Engstrom has a longer leash and that means he needs to be in the lineup to take some pressure off the top four, especially the main three, as running them over 25 minutes a night routinely is asking for trouble.  That’s one solution.

The other is Kaiden Guhle coming back, ideally within the next few weeks.  If he pushes Alexandre Carrier to the third pairing or anchors that pairing himself, they can probably give the sixth defender a bit more of a leash and balance things out a bit more.

But if that doesn’t go as planned or more injuries hit, it’s starting to feel like the Habs might need to start looking at the trade market for a defenceman, a thought that would have seemed nuts not that long ago.  At this point, if neither of Xhekaj nor Struble are going to earn the trust of the coaches, management needs to find someone they will.  Otherwise, the top defenders are really going to start to get run down as the season goes on.