Game 75: Montreal Canadiens vs. Boston Bruins
Start time: 7:00 PM EDT / 4:00 PM PDT
In Canada: Sportsnet (English)
In the Canadiens region: RDS (French)
In the Bruins region: NESN
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, Sportsnet+
After a five-game winless streak threatened to drop Montreal right out of the playoff race, they responded with two big wins versus the Florida Panthers, adding four points to their total. Now, they have a stretch of three games in four days versus some of the poorest teams in the NHL: the Boston Bruins tonight, Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, and then a quick trip to Nashville to play the Predators on Sunday. The Flyers are the best of those teams with a record five games under .500, so this is a chance for the Habs to rack up a handful of points and really make themselves difficult to catch over the last few matches of the season.
Martin St-Louis is happy with how his team played the last two games, even if it did take a last-gasp effort to get them a point in the dying seconds of regulation. Though the Panthers were banged up and missing several players, they were stacked with talent in comparison to the current Bruins, who are trying to cobble a lineup together around David Pastrnak to see out the season.
Even if Pastrnak is about to enjoy a bit of offence — as he often does in this rivalry with 20 goals and 21 assists in 31 career games — Montreal should be able to outperform his team’s production. Six times during their nine-game losing streak the Bruins have allowed four goals or more, simply unable to compete with teams that didn’t sell off several players at the deadline. It really shouldn’t be much of a contest tonight if they Canadiens play their game, and a loss would be very disappointing from a Habs team with playoff aspirations.
Montreal Canadiens projected lineup
| Left Wing |
Centre |
Right Wing |
| #13 Cole Caufield |
#14 Nick Suzuki |
#20 Juraj Slafkovský |
| #17 Josh Anderson |
#28 Christian Dvorak |
#11 Brendan Gallagher |
| #51 Emil Heineman |
#15 Alex Newhook |
#92 Patrik Laine |
| #55 Michael Pezzetta |
#71 Jake Evans |
#40 Joel Armia |
| Left Defence |
Right Defence |
| #21 Kaiden Guhle |
#48 Lane Hutson |
| #8 Mike Matheson |
#45 Alexandre Carrier |
| #47 Jayden Struble |
#58 David Savard |
| Starter |
Backup |
| #35 Samuel Montembeault |
#75 Jakub Dobeṧ |
Scratched: Oliver Kapanen, Joshua Roy, Arber Xhekaj
Injured: Kirby Dach
Boston Bruins projected lineup
| Left Wing |
Centre |
Right Wing |
| Morgan Geekie |
Pavel Zacha |
David Pastrnak |
| Cole Koepke |
Elias Lindholm |
Fabian Lysell |
| Marat Khusnutdinov |
Casey Mittelstadt |
Vinni Lettieri |
| Jakub Lauko |
John Beecher |
Patrick Brown |
| Left Defence |
Right Defence |
| Nikita Zadorov |
Henri Jokiharju |
| Parker Wotherspoon |
Andrew Peeke |
| Mason Lohrei |
Ian Mitchell |
| Starter |
Backup |
| Jeremy Swayman |
Joonas Korpisalo |
