On Last Night: Habs Still Pursuing The First Victory Of The Jeff Gorton Era

The Montreal Canadiens face growing injury, illness and frustration in a dismal season and, unfortunately, there still doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

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I’m going to talk about the game, I promise, but first I want to talk about something personal. A long time ago, I mean in 2008, I was working on finishing college when I discovered this website called HI / O that was building a community of Habs fans. Before long, Mike Boone’s live blog and About Last Night went like caffeine straight into the veins of this early 1920s Canadian-crazed political science student.

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After a year of screaming about how terrible the Scott Gomez trade was, I started my own little blog, based on the support of Boone himself. Eventually, I was asked to write for a larger blog, then run it, and during that time Mike was kind enough to profile me in the Montreal Gazette not once, but twice. Mike was the first person in the business to believe in me, and years later, after the signatories to RDS, Sportsnet, The Winnipeg Free Press, and now The Montreal Gazette, I went back to where it all started last night and ran the blog live. for the first time. Mike is both a mentor and a friend, and always will be.

I did that with my four year old on the couch next to me as this year he is getting into hockey because he knows Dad likes it and loves to be with him at all times. I will not lie, it is a bit emotional moment. Last night was a very boring game, but it was special for me anyway. Thanks for sharing it with me.

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Now about that game …

It wasn’t as bad as the one against the Vancouver Canucks, was it? The Canucks are terrible and dominated the Canadiens territorially when the game was tied. At least the Avalanche are legitimate contenders.

However, they are legitimate contenders who played the night before, had to travel from Toronto and allowed eight goals on Wednesday. He played the same goalie, and the Canadiens just didn’t do much to challenge Jonas Johansson, who has a .891 save percentage this season. That’s not great, even with Brendan Gallagher and Sami Niku suddenly removed from the lineup with positive COVID tests.

The Canadiens’ power play was a big problem in this game. It took until the fourth power play for them to even register a shot at the net, and by then they had already allowed a short goal from Valeri Nichushkin, who took advantage of an exceptional forecheck from Logan O’Connor and a very weak play from Chris. Wideman to beat Jake Allen and open the scoring.

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On their fourth power play opportunity, the Canadiens finally got a shot on goal, and Ben Chiarot did have a smart little doll that found the mark and tied the score at one.

Unfortunately for the Canadiens, Cale Makar saw Chiarot’s wrist and said “anything you can do, I can do better,” and he swiped one of his own through a screen and passed Allen. Initially, the goal was given to Gabriel Landeskog on what looked like a tip, but the NHL decided he did not touch the puck. I’m still undecided about that. He waves at him, but I can’t tell if he connects. It doesn’t matter much to Canadians.

With some hope remaining heading into the third period, the Canadiens trailing only one despite being well outmatched, the Avalanches were quick to pounce on a hectic situation and show who the boss was.

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Andre Burakovsky pounced on the bouncing puck to cement Colorado’s grip on the game, and you could argue that the third goal was a series of bad rebounds, but if you watch that play multiple times, there are a few things you’ll notice. For starters, the Canadiens are watching the play unfold, without doing much. Alexander Romanov is knocked out a bit by Christian Dvorak on the back check, but at the end of the day, Avalanche players have their eyes on the puck at all times. They are the first to do it multiple times and eventually Allen can’t handle the rebounding and one goes in.

Landeskog would recover his goal with the empty net, freezing the game for his Avalanche.

To add damage to the insult, Kurtis MacDermid rode Josh Anderson against the boards in what was a near-legal hit at best, and Anderson had to leave the game with an upper body injury. It’s an especially hard blow for the Canadiens to lose their leading scorer to Brendan Gallagher either temporarily, but Anderson and Gallagher have also been providing what little spark the Canadiens have had physically of late, as the two players they have been able to generate on their own just some energy for the club on the ice.

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We don’t know how long Anderson will be out, but they could use his presence only on an entertainment value level.

Lately, the level of entertainment has been low for this team and, unfortunately, it does not seem that things are going to improve anytime soon.

Using Evolving-Hockey’s expected goals model at 5v5 on a 10-game moving average, the Canadiens are still falling after taking a light breath during a stretch and playing well, and if you were to include special teams in this, you would they would see even worse. Tonight, the Canadiens were beaten and beaten at their own power game. On a cumulative basis in all situations, only the Arizona Coyotes, Ottawa Senators, Buffalo Sabers and the Philadelphia Flyers are worse. It’s going to be a long season.

At this point, the worst that could happen is the Canadiens finishing outside of the bottom 10 in the league and handing over their own first-round pick to the Hurricanes. Tearing off the band-aid hurts, but you have to.

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Reference-montrealgazette.com

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