Game 35: Montreal Canadiens @ Florida Panthers
Start time: **1:00 PM EST / 10:00 AM PST**
In Canada: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Panthers region: SCRIPPS Sports
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+
Before the NHL paused for the holidays, Samuel Montembeault made three starts in four days. The decision panned out in the first two as the goaltender claimed back-to-back wins over the Detroit Red Wings, but it was apparent that he was feeling the effects of fatigue in the final game. With the skaters in front of him also tired, the result was a loss, a four-point swing in favour of a Columbus Blue Jackets team they’re chasing in the standings.
Unable to trust Cayden Primeau with a game versus even a Red Wings team that has played so poorly in recent weeks that they fired their head coach a couple of days ago, it was clear that something had to change. That was especially true with more compressed stretches on the docket, including a back-to-back to begin the post-Christmas slate. The decision was to call up Jakub Dobes from the AHL’s Laval Rocket, and do something the Habs avoided at all costs a season ago: place Primeau on waivers.
Dobes will make his NHL debut today versus the Florida Panthers. It’s a tough position to throw a goaltender into for his first action at the top level, but it was a necessary evil for the team. Primeau did not have the confidence to play one of the worst teams in the league let alone one of the best. With Dobes, at least there’s a chance for an incredible performance to shock the defending Stanley Cup champions.
Ultimately, today’s game isn’t the focus for Montreal this weekend. They would of course love to earn a point or two as they will all be critical in the bid to get back in the playoff picture, but the Panthers aren’t a team they would overtake to get into that position. Florida ranks second in the division and is much more likely to move up from that spot than down. The club the Habs need to make up a couple of points on is the Tampa Bay Lightning sitting in the first wild-card spot, the opponent they will visit late Sunday afternoon. That’s the game Montreal needs to win most. That’s the game Montembeault, having received six days of rest, will be in net for.
| Canadiens | Statistics | Panthers |
|---|---|---|
| 14-17-3 | Record | 22-12-2 |
| 47.8% (26th) | Scoring-chances-for % | 53.8% (6th) |
| 2.94 (21st) | Goals per game | 3.44 (5th) |
| 3.59 (30th) | Goals against per game | 3.11 (19th) |
| 22.0% (13th) | PP% | 26.3% (4th0 |
| 82.0% (10th) | PK% | 80.8% (12th) |
| 1-2-1 | Head-to-Head Record | 3-1-0 |
A loss to the Panthers has mostly been a foregone conclusion for the Canadiens in the post-Carey Price era. Since a 10-2 win in the future Hall-of-Famer’s final career start, Montreal lost seven games in a row, with the average margin of defeat being 3.4 goals. But last year, one of those losses came in a shootout, and they snapped the losing streak in the final game, a 5-3 win at the Bell Centre.
For this first of four games in the 2024-25 season series, the Habs are catching Florida during a bit of an odd stretch. The Panthers went into the break winning four games in a row before the Lightning split a home-and-home with them at the end, but they’ve also been shut out three times in the past seven contests, and held to under three goals on five occasions in their past eight outings.
While most of the players have seen their offence drop off, that slump doesn’t apply to Matthew Tkachuk. He’s been red-hot in the month of December, scoring eight goals and adding eight assists in 11 games. He has 38 shots on target and 17 scoring chances in those games as he’s trying to single-handedly guide his team through this middle third of the campaign.
If Montreal wants to give Dobes a shot at claiming his first NHL win, the defence will have to contain Tkachuk. That task will likely fall on the new duo of Kaiden Guhle and Alexandre Carrier if Martin St-Louis can create that matchup without last change. But there are also Aleksander Barkov (16 points versus Montreal over the past two seasons), Sam Reinhart (11 points), and Carter Verhaeghe (10 points, and a +11 rating) to be concerned with. It will be all hands on deck in front of the rookie netminder today in Sunrise, while the Habs will also need to find a way to score some goals of their own to take something from the game.
