On Thursday, the two-time defending champions came into the Bell Centre on the heels of a drubbing at the hands of the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday, as opposed to Montreal’s complete win over Calgary the night prior. Unfortunately for them, they fared no better in La Belle Province against a high-flying and confident Montreal Canadiens team. With an opportunity to take the Conference lead, Montreal closed in on Florida’s defenders and skated around them whenever they couldn’t go through them en route to a 6-2 victory. This penalty and emotion-filled game had it all except a proper fight, including a hat trick from Alexandre Texier.
Montreal dominated play in the first and third periods, and gave up little in the second. Florida was able to gain some momentum as the Habs lagged in the second, but Samuel Montembeault was there to shut the door when the breakdowns led to actual chances for the visitors. The Canadiens’ defenders were active up and down the ice all night, and their defensive scheme held up very well to the Panthers’ forecheck. The game was a full effort from the entire lineup for a second game in a row to take the divisional lead.
Habs Lineup
Alexandre Texier — Nick Suzuki — Cole Caufield
Juraj Slafkovsky – Oliver Kapanen — Ivan Demidov
Zachary Bolduc – Phillip Danault – Brendan Gallagher
Samuel Blais — Joe Veleno — Owen Beck
Mike Matheson – Noah Dobson
Lane Hutson — Alexandre Carrier
Jayden Struble – Arber Xhekaj
Samuel Montembeault (Starter) – Jakub Dobes (Backup)
10 Thoughts
1) The Panthers opened up the game with three quick icings as the Montreal forwards tried to get a quick start to their offence with dump-ins. The play was stunted with whistles and broken plays, until the third icings puts the sixth faceoff of the first three minutes to the left of Sergei Bobrovsky. Oliver Kapanen won the faceoff against Conn Smythe winner Sam Bennett back to Mike Matheson, who fed Noah Dobson for the classic faceoff-point shot. Dobson wired a one timer slap shot towards the net and past Bobrovsky to give the Habs an early lead. Dobson’s shot struck A.J. Greer’s stick enroute to the net.
2) A few minutes later at 6:24 of the first, Slafkovsky was called for “boarding” Aaron Ekblad in the Panthers corner. Slafkovsky had hit Ekblad moments earlier on the numbers with significantly lighter force. Ekblad did not turn at all as he retrieved the puck in the corner, and instead seemed to duck down as the pressure from Slafkovsky was incoming. Slafkovsky pushed him down with his body, Ekblad crumpled, and Florida drew the power play. Montreal’s defensive pillars of Dobson and Matheson stood tall during the penalty kill; Dobson blocked two shots and cleared the puck, and Matheson cut off two passes low in the zone to relieve pressure. The Habs emerged unscathed and got back on the attack shortly following Slafkovsky’s departure from the penalty box.
3) Cole Caufield drew Montreal’s first power play of the game when he took a crosscheck from Uvis Balinskis in the neutral zone. The puck was headed towards Caufield near the penalty boxes, and the undrafted Latvian defender laid the wood on the smaller forward enough to draw the call. Montreal’s man advantage was slightly anemic as the throttling from an aggressive penalty kill ended most of the plays the attackers tried. The top unit struggled to get any meaningful possession around the checkers, and Montreal’s best chance came when Dobson jumped on the ice and just hammered a loose puck on net.
4) Montreal’s second goal of the period came with less than three minutes remaining in a spectacular show of connection and improvisation. The play started when Matheson broke the Habs out of the zone with an outlet pass to Juraj Slafkovsky, cruising up the middle of the ice. The human-presenting Slovakian mutant dumped the puck in behind Demidov along the left boards, and the winger put pressure on Florida’s defense behind the net to move the puck quickly. Donovan Sebrango tried to move the puck to Jeff Petry on the other side of the trapezoid, but Slafkovsky tied him up before the puck could get anywhere, following up on his dump-in. Slafkovsky got body position on the former Hab, then kicked out the puck to the crease. Bobrovsky alertly paddled the puck away from himself and into the air, however, Kapanen was right there in front of him to backhand bat it out of the air and over the goaltender’s left shoulder. Immediately following the score, Slafkovsky was rung up for another penalty when he interfered with Mackie Samoskevich along the boards. Montreal was able to fight off the man advantage once more before the period expired, then headed to the dressing room up two against a team that was 3-13-2 when trailing after a single period.
5) Montembeault needed to be sharp early in the second period as the Cats from Sunrise got their legs moving under them in the pursuit of 50/50 pucks and dealing out forechecking pressure. At 5:33 of the second, he turned a routine clear into an instant goal against. With Montreal scuffing their feet, Greer dumped the puck in behind Montembeault. The netminder retrieved in the trapezoid, saw Greer approaching from the front, heard the reverse call from Carrier, and sent the pass behind his back. Unfortunately for him, and the fans watching the play develop, the puck was far in front of Carrier in the corner and instead was a tape-to-tape pass for Bennett. Bennett put the puck into the gaping empty cage and cut Montreal’s lead in half.
6) As time passed in the second period, both teams exchanged glancing blows and perimeter chances. They struggled against each other in all three zones in an attempt to gain an established forecheck and possession for extended periods in their opponents’ end of the ice. Florida continuously initiated a chip-and-chase game and then worked short pop passes into Montembeault’s feet. The Habs were able to break through the morass of defenders in front of Bobrovsky at 13:41 of the second. Montreal’s top line entered the zone and stayed there as their board play overpowered the Panthers on the ice and they were able to keep it away long enough to get penetration into the middle. Lane Hutson and Carrier were cooking on the blue line as they crossed around each other and the puck was worked over to Suzuki at the left circle. The captain beat his checker and sent the puck back across the top of the zone to Carrier. He held on to the puck just long enough until Texier, in front of the net, spun off of Sam Reinhart in front of the net. He got his stick on the ice for Carrier to send a perfect bank pass off it and behind Bobrovsky to restore the two-goal lead. It should be noted that Caufield was also right next to him in front of the net and taking the same punishment.
7) With little time remaining in the second period, Texier took a stick to the face from Anton Lundell in a clearly disregulated movement. Reinhart took a hard check along the boards after clearing the puck out of the zone, and Lundell shifted to that side of the ice. When he and Texier got tangled up, Lundell came up from his bended position with his stick horizontal and he twisted, laying the shaft across Texier’s cheek and committing a four-minute double-minor. Montreal was not able to effectively get established over the first two minutes of the power play before the expiration of the period, but the second unit was able to get some shots on net. Each group struggled to enter the zone effectively whenever Florida’s defence and forwards stacked up the blue line. They interfered with Montreal’s players with impunity, a strategy clearly designed as a method of ‘flooding the zone’. You can’t call every single play, can you?
8) With around 35 seconds remaining in the advantage, Montreal attempted an unsuccessful set play in the offensive zone with Suzuki and Slafkovsky. Unable to get the pass through, both teams grinded below the Florida net through the shift until the puck popped out. Eventually, Montreal was able to work the puck back into Florida’s end, but Danault was called for a penalty that he did not commit. As he, Lundell, and Niko Mikkola went for the loose puck in the corner behind Bobrovsky, Mikkola’s stick got up into Lundell’s lips. To the dismay of all hockey and “officiating” fans, a high-sticking call was issued to Danault. In an even more disappointing move, despite a lengthy review, the play was actually non-reviewable, so naturally, Danault sat for two minutes. Naturally. Why bother to try to get the call right if you’re not forced to?
9) Samuel Blais and Sebrango took opposing minor penalties after a scrum in front of the net at 4:26 of the third. Montreal had been maintaining possession and skating downhill in their zone, activating their defencemen and pinching on 50/50 pucks. Arber Xhekaj took a puck along the wall and put a backhand on net. Bobrovsky easily caught and stopped the puck, but Blais tried to get a stick on it first. Instead, he clipped the front of the netminder’s mask, a fact that the Cats did not seemingly appreciate. Sebrango was on the scene to protect his goaltender, took Blais down, and the game went to four-on-four play for the next two minutes. Neither team capitalized on the extra ice, but Texier doubled down moments later. Montreal’s newest player added another point to his torrid pace when he and Caufield burned a pinching Petry to head down the ice for a two-on-one. Petry tried to get to the slot from his point as Greer’s pass was picked off by Matheson. Montreal’s defender fed Texier, who was higher in the zone covering behind Petry, and the line’s two wingers went up the ice. Texier tried to send a pass along the ice to Caufield halfway into the Panthers zone, but Sebrango blocked it right back to Texier, and the French Olympian buried the puck past a sprawling Bobrovsky.
10) Bennett was issued a slashing call 200 feet from his own net when his stick came chopping down onto Bolduc’s, snapping it in half. Despite getting set up in the zone and getting looks on the goal, Montreal’s one-timer shots from Demidov struggled to get through the bodies or hit the net around them. The front of the net and slot were completely jammed up, and the forwards did not even attempt a single seam pass through them. Once he got out of the box, Bennett immediately punished the Habs for not scoring when they had the easier chance. The puck came ringing around the Panthers’ zone and out into the neutral zone, landing on Bennett’s stick before being dropped off for Evan Rodrigues. Rodrigues skated from the left dot at his own blueline through the middle of the ice and all the way down to the top of the Canadiens left circle, where his shot allowed for a juicy rebound. Montembeault’s pads kicked the puck out to his own left, where Bennett was waiting behind Matheson to bang in the rolling puck.
Florida pulled Bobrovsky with around 2:30 remaining in the third, but not to positive results. In their first opportunity along the wall, Suzuki and Danault cleared the puck out with relative ease once the passing play deteriorated for the Cats. On the next shift, Slafkovsky was awarded a goal when his stick was slashed in front of the empty net. To cap off the night in incredible fashion, after a lengthy stoppage for scrums and misconducts, Texier batted a puck out of the air for his first career hat trick right at the end of the game. Joe Veleno danced three Florida skaters along the wall, worked the puck to the middle and sent a shot on net. Bobrovsky blockered it back, but it bounced off a player in front of him and seemed to hang in the air for a split second. Texier did not miss his baseball swing.
HabsWorld Habs 3 Stars
1st Star – Alexandre Texier
From his versatility in the offensive zone and dogged pursuit of loose pucks in the defensive end, Texier has shone on the top line with Suzuki and Caufield. Dedicated observers may know in their heart that he is not the forever partner for those two, but he certainly has provided an element of the game they lost when the coaching staff switched Slafkovsky for Bolduc earlier in the season. Texier got the third goal with his positioning in front of the net, and the fourth with his positioning in the defensive zone, locking down a Florida push. The final goal was a pure treat for all in attendance.
Stats: 3 goals, +2, 6 shots, 1 hit, 17:15 T.O.I., 1 five-minute WAVE
2nd Star – Mike Matheson
Matheson was invaluable to the effort put forward by Montreal in both games of the back-to-back, but most especially against the Panthers. He was called upon to cut off the slot passes and guard the net front presence that Florida is so good at, and he absolutely delivered. Bennett beat him once for his second goal, but the stability and hard-nosed physicality in the reinvented Mike Matheson has provided for the void left by David Savard. Moreover, Matheson can bloody well pass the puck.
Stats: 2 assists, +1, 1 shot, 2 blocks, 25:50 T.O.I.
3rd Star – Samuel Montembeault
Despite the glaring rebounds offered to the Cats in the third period and the giveaway that led to a goal in the second, Samuel Montembeault was a critical component to the Canadiens’ effort. Throughout the second and third periods, he made crucial stops that allowed Montreal to get the puck out of the zone and back up the ice for their own offence. His stop in the dying minutes of the third period kept the momentum and energy of the entire building up, enabling the two closing goals to be scored without the heat of a third Florida score to creep into your mind. Since his return, he has been excellent for the Canadiens against wonderfully difficult foes.
Stats: .926 SV%, 25 SV, 2 GA