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Heading into a game against his former team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, Michel Therrien has been getting heat not only from the writers and commenters on this site, but from all over the place. Inserting Douglas Murray and Francis Bouillon into the lineup over Alexei Emelin and Raphael Diaz seemed to instill in his team a defeated attitude before the game even began.
The Canadiens didn’t show up, left Price out to dry, and got blown out.
Over the last week I had published a few articles on how bad the Canadiens were playing this season compared to last year, and one of the most common requests was to see how this season’s Canadiens lined up against the Pittsburgh Penguins of 2008-09, for the 57 games before Therrien was canned in favour of Dan Bylsma.
As it turns out, it’s downright deja vu.
Red is the Habs this season, blue is the Penguins until Therrien was let go. The Penguins went 27-25-5, the Canadiens are currently 27-18-5, with the main difference being the strong start by the Habs, and the incredible goaltending Montreal has received from Carey Price.
But that goaltending is faltering, as Chris Boyle pointed out this morning on twitter, because the Canadiens are allowing more shots from scoring areas. He created a gif to illustrate this using a heat chart.
The gif doesn’t loop, but you can see it looped in video form to get the full effect here.
This is a giant disaster waiting to happen. Something has to give right away in order to save this season, and it’s time for Marc Bergevin to man up and make a move.
