Game 41: Montreal Canadiens @ Washington Capitals
Start time: 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Capitals region: Monumental Sports Network
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+
When we last saw the Canadiens play, they had moved into a playoff spot in front of their home fans and left the Bell Centre to enjoy a needed break. Perhaps Montreal’s rapid rise inspired many of the teams they had passed, because the next night most of those in the playoff chase earned at least a point in some close battles. It was to be expected that the hold on the second wild-card position would only be temporary with the midweek pause, and now it will take more than just one two-point result to get back in. They do have multiple games in hand on the teams with more points ahead of them, but they return to action into another back-to-back situation.
Thanks to Jakub Dobes’s shootout win over the Colorado Avalanche a week ago, the Canadiens improved their record to 9-2-1 in games played back-to-back this season, and it’s just as tough an opponent that he’ll face tonight in his third NHL start. He’s gotten the call for another road contest, confronting the Washington Capitals, who are second in the NHL with 58 points, before Samuel Montembeault gets the Saturday night home start versus the Dallas Stars. That’s two of the top seven NHL teams, setting up another grueling weekend for a Habs team that is starting to get used to them.
| Canadiens | Statistics | Capitals |
|---|---|---|
| 19-18-3 | Record | 27-10-4 |
| 48.6% (23rd) | Scoring-chances-for % | 53.1% (7th) |
| 3.00 (17th) | Goals per game | 3.66 (2nd) |
| 3.38 (28th) | Goals against per game | 2.61 (5th) |
| 22.1% (17th) | PP% | 23.5% (11th) |
| 82.0% (11th) | PK% | 83.5% (5th) |
| 0-2-0 | Head-to-Head Record | 2-0-0 |
The Canadiens have seen first-hand how good the Capitals are this year, losing the first two games of the season series by multiple goals. On both occasions, it was a three-goal third period from Washington that proved to be the difference as the Canadiens could muster nothing in the final frame to answer. That’s six of the 49 third-period goals the Caps have this season, which ranks eighth in the league, but they also rank seventh in second-period goals and first in tallies in the opening period. You have to play the full 60 minutes versus this deep team in the U.S. capital, something Montreal hasn’t been able to do in two attempts.
Montreal didn’t have Alexandre Carrier in the lineup for either of those games, the most recent one played on December 7. Martin St-Louis will be trying to deploy his newest shutdown defenceman versus the most dangerous trio Washington will send out. The coach just has to decide if that is the Dylan Strome line with Alexander Ovechkin and Aliaksei Protas (101 points combined) or a resurgent Pierre-Luc Dubois flanked by Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson (97 points). Wilson leads the team with eight points in the seven games played since Christmas, and all of Dubois’s seven points have come at even strength.
Ideally, the other two pairings will help Carrier and Kaiden Guhle with the difficult task of containing the league’s second-best offence, as they have been doing especially in Dobes’s starts of late. Without Patrik Laine to help the Habs outscore the Capitals, defence is going to be the key to avoid a season-series sweep and extend this current run beyond the 8-2-0 record Montreal has enjoyed over its past 10 games.
