By game 30 of the season, the Montreal Canadiens began their adventure in Pittsburgh with just six wins. It is a remarkable total. It promised to be tough without Carey Price and Shea Weber, but wow.
The Canadiens don’t have 10 regulars, but they had Jeff Petry back from injury. The Penguins skidded to a 5-2 victory.
Wilde Horses
It was a night in which some hopes arose. The Canadiens have been the second worst power play and penalties this season, but this one they looked good. Pittsburgh had a 5-on-3 power game for one minute and 43 seconds and the Canadiens were able to get the job done.
In the power play, the Penguins were able to successfully kill their 31st in a row, but Montreal looked extremely good in their second two-minute period with the extra man.
The Canadiens spent the full two minutes in the Pittsburgh area and got some quality looks with outstanding puck movement.
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The transmissions kept coming to Cole Caufield and it looked good. Jonathan Drouin was also in that power play for two minutes. His disk recovery was excellent on many occasions. Nick Suzuki is strong too. It was the best power play has seen in a long time.
The Power Play is a work in progress, but it was promising.
Drouin also opened the scoring for Montreal in the second period. He made a sweet movement from right to back to mark the ceiling of the account. Drouin got the chance thanks to a sweet pass from Laurent Dauphin.
Montreal was in the game at the time, just 2-1 down. They had shown some good times on a night when they were ready to race.
At the end of the second period, it was Drouin who again excelled. He hung up with the record and was not denied. It was Drouin’s best game of the season. He gave it to Jesse Ylonen and he absolutely hit it for the first goal of his career.
The Canadiens were fighting hard and trailing just 3-2 after two.
Wild goats
The same old stuff that has plagued the team this season: defensive failures; bad grade; no gap control. There is no reason to continue accumulating in this section, if there is nothing new.
This is what a rebuild looks like. Here’s what it looks like when 10 regulars are out of alignment. Seven losses in a row for the Canadiens. Two goals or less for the 22nd time in 30 games. Five or more goals allowed for the 10th time. It is what it is. It is this.
Wilde’s Letters
The NHL has a COVID-19 problem and it’s getting worse.
There are 25 players in the last 36 hours who have entered COVID protocols. There are now five teams that have had part of their schedule postponed due to COVID-19. There are more than 160 players in a league of around 700 players who have tested positive this season.
The league does not expect to suspend anything from its season at this time. However, they realize that the situation is not under control and they are looking for ways to mitigate the problem.
Here we hope that the league understands the science. We don’t hear from the NHL what the status of the players is in terms of effective vaccination. Only one player in the entire league, Tyler Bertuzzi, isn’t vaccinated, but how long ago did league players get their chance?
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That’s the problem around the world right now, with Omicron spreading like wildfire. The variant is breaking expiring vaccines. Scientists say the vaccine works only 25 to 30 percent effective after six months against the Omicron variant.
This is why booster injections are recommended in many nations, although Quebec is lagging behind in this. Scientists say that a booster shot returns the effectiveness against Omicron to 85 percent.
It almost seems as if NHL players are basically unprotected against the virus due to the decreased effectiveness of their original vaccine. It is impossible to prove this as the league has not let anyone know this information.
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Canadiens owner Molson said running hockey operations will be a two-person job.
It is also possible that the league will not go to the Olympic Games in China this February. The Chinese government has said that the quarantine is possible for five weeks for Olympic athletes. How can it be acceptable for a player to be left behind in China for a month while his team seeks a playoff spot?
Everything is fluid, as it has been since mid-March 2020 as this nightmarish pandemic continues to ravage. The only positive is that the cases are mild for these NHL players.
May it continue to be so for each of them.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after every Canadiens game.
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