Looking to earn their first win of the season, the Montreal Canadiens welcomed a familiar face back to the Bell Centre, as Jesperi Kotkaniemi and the Carolina Hurricanes rolled into town. If ever there was a game for them to get up for, this would be it.
Welcome to your Bottom Six Minutes for a game they definitely didn’t get up for.
The Canadiens scored twice in this game, technically, and both goals were on the power play! Unfortunately, one of those goals was disallowed, and I’ll touch on why that was an absolute joke of a call. Goaltender interference is perhaps the most inconsistently called thing in the NHL, and the Canadiens fell victim to that on Thursday.
But it didn’t matter, as a hapless forecheck, an even more hapless breakout, and general inability on the power play sunk this team. Even if the refs allowed the Brendan Gallagher goal in the first, they would have lost this game. As much as it would be nice to blame the officials, they have only themselves to blame.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, someone must be getting fired for this. The power play is terrible, their breakout is worse, and on the rare occasion they get any sustained offensive zone time, they usually end it with a long shot that doesn’t generate much. A message has to be sent that the organization isn’t tolerating this.
Perhaps signing coaches to three-year contracts after a magical playoff run was a bad idea.
Perhaps things will change for Saturday night. We can certainly remain hopeful, at least. Until then, we wait and see if anyone ends up canned over one of the worst starts in franchise history.
