Canadiens @ Oilers Top Six Minutes: Overturned goals don’t stop the Habs

For our new readers and members, the Top Six Minutes is a continuation of the discussion in the game thread. We try to keep it light and entertaining. Full recaps are up the morning after every game.

Pre-game

• Welcome back between the pipes, Monty. Let’s hope you fully have the Winnipeg incident erased from your memory.
• Don’t worry. It’s only Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl you’re facing tonight.

First period

• Stay in your net Montembeault. That’s how you can help. Please, no adventures.
• Three-on-two with McDavid leading the charge and Montembeault says not up in here!
• Draisaitl heads towards the net but Chiarot’s on his six and literally pushes him off the puck. Good, Ben. Just wondering... how would you feel about staying a Hab? Asking for a friend.
• Caufield strolls on in surrounded by Oilers, snipes and opens the scoring!
• Kane immediately strikes back 22 seconds later.
• How the heck did that stay out?! The hockey gods are watching over us tonight.
• We got ourselves a power-play goal and... it was a Gally goal! They do exist!
• Draisaitl tries to tie it up at the buzzer but Monty denies him with a beauty save!

Second period

• Still riding a high, Gally gives it another go two minutes in but can’t follow up.
• Pez barrels his way in but can’t finish.
• Turris and Romanov both want the puck and Turris learns the hard way that you can’t have the puck when a Romanov check is involved.
• McLeod ties it up. But that’s got to be goaltender interference. St. Louis thinks so too.
• Stands as a good goal. Depends on your definition of good, I suppose.
• Off to the power play we go again. Shall we make it two PPG’s?
• Suzuki says... may as well! What. A. Shot.
• Are you freaking kidding me?! Woodcroft challenges offside.
• And naturally, that one gets overturned.
• A called-back goal doesn’t faze Suzuki, he just notches another one before the power play is over!
• Dauphin follows it up with a shorty and we’re up 4-2!
• So they’re just going to challenge all of our goals now I see.
• And bye-bye goal. Again.
• Why do we have to suffer just because these linesmen were clearly never trained in offside?

Third period

• Monty, we just need 20 more minutes of your mad skills. Just 20 minutes and we’re golden.
• The puck slides behind Montembeault but not in the net. The hockey gods are still on our side even if the officiating is not.
• Hey, we’re on the power play. You know what that means.
• Officials catch one! Smith gets a delay of game for blatantly pushing off his net.
• Gallagher heads to the box for interference after knocking the stick out of a player's hands... who was on the bench and had his stick on the ice. I think the refs called interference on the wrong team there.
• St. Louis, you’ve coached peewee. What do you do when players do stupid things with their sticks?
• Kulak wraps around, Smith overcommits and we’ve got a Lehky shorthanded goal!
• And no offside challenge. Bonus.
• Edmonton realizes their hockey players and not Olympic divers, right?
• Oilers pull Smith with 3:50 left. It backfires as Hoffman takes advantage of the open net!
• Habs win 5-2 (but we all know it’s really 7-2).

EOTP 3 Stars

3) If you zoom in a bit you can see that Gallagher’s reputation initiated contact

2) Well they couldn’t declare them the winner of their own game, so...

1) It’s the best kind of defence