Game 66: Montreal Canadiens vs. Florida Panthers
Start time: 7:00 PM EDT / 4:00 PM PDT
In Canada: CityTV, Sportsnet East (English), TVA Sports (French)
In the Panthers region: Scripps
Streaming: ESPN+, TSN+
Already leading the Atlantic Division, the Florida Panthers made moves ahead of the trade deadline to improve their depth. In search of a second consecutive Stanley Cup, they added defenceman Seth Jones, who had grown weary of a stalled rebuild effort in Chicago, and Brad Marchand, whose departure from the Boston Bruins will begin a rare rebuild for that Original Six franchise.
Marchand has yet to suit up with his new team as he recovers from an upper-body injury, but Jones’s acquisition is proving to be an important one. Aaron Ekblad was recently handed a suspension that will carry through the first two games of the post-season for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy. With their most-used player out of the lineup, Jones has stepped in to chew up even more minutes for the team, averaging 23:57 in his five games so far, with that average going up to 28:19 in the two games played on Florida’s road trip so far. It looks like Nick Suzuki and his linemates will be seeing a lot of the newest Panthers blue-liner this evening.
The Panthers enter this game nine points behind the Washington Capitals for the top spot in the Eastern Conference and four points up on the Toronto Maple Leafs, whom Jones helped contain to two goals on Thursday. Right now, they’re destined to play the first wild-card team in the opening round, which looks most likely to be the Ottawa Senators. But the Canadiens aren’t done having their say in that race for the final two spots, still with two games to play versus Ottawa, and there’s still a possibility that the Panthers could be the first-round matchup if the Habs complete this improbable journey.
| Canadiens | Statistics | Panthers |
|---|---|---|
| 31-27-7 | Record | 41-22-3 |
| 47.8% (27th) | Scoring-chances-for % | 55.6% (2nd) |
| 2.95 (16th) | Goals per game | 3.24 (8th) |
| 3.28 (25th) | Goals against per game | 2.68 (7th) |
| 21.7% (17th) | PP% | 24.1% (10th) |
| 81.3% (9th) | PK% | 81.1% (11th) |
| 1-0-0 | Head-to-Head Record | 0-1-0 |
Since the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Panthers are one of the hottest teams in the NHL with a 7-2-0 record. That happens to be worth the same amount of points as the Canadiens have earned with their 6-1-2 record in the same number of games. It wasn’t as productive a trip through the northern cities of the Pacific Division as Montreal would have hoped, but by claiming half the points available they did enough to stay right in the thick of things in the wild-card race. The two teams they’re chasing play each other today, with one of the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Rangers guaranteed to claim two points, but a win by Montreal will move them ahead of one of those clubs to sit a point back in ninth.
Taking two points is never an easy feat when the Habs play the Panthers, who rattled off seven consecutive wins over the Habs to begin the post-Carey Price era. But Montreal has won the last two games versus its Floridian rival: a 5-3 win toward the end of last season, and Jakub Dobes’s debut shutout performance on December 28 that ignited the Canadiens’ rise to where they sit right now.
Montreal has an important sequence of games in the next few days with the Senators on the schedule on Tuesday and the New York Islanders, who currently sit two points back of the Habs, on Thursday. Martin St-Louis has called upon Samuel Montembeault for tonight’s game versus his former team, and Montembeault will likely be playing the other two games as well. He is 5-0-1 in his six starts since getting a gold medal with Team Canada, even though he allowed three goals in three consecutive games before holding the Canucks to two. Playing a team as capable of offence as the Panthers (despite being without Matthew Tkachuk), limiting them to three goals would be an accomplishment. The Canadiens will probably need to hit at least four goals, as they’ve done in their last two outings, to pull off a big win in their return home.
