Game 43: Montreal Canadiens @ Utah Hockey Club
Start time: **9:00 PM EST / 6:00 PM PST**
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Utah region: Utah16
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+
A move from Tempe to Salt Lake City seemed to rejuvenate the team formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes. More professional ownership, and not just the upgrade from a 5,000-seat arena to Delta Center’s 11,000 capacity but the end of the annual questions about where the franchise would play its games. appeared to have taken a weight off of everyone involved. Thanks to years of making high picks (expect for those seasons when they didn’t make selections as punishment for holding an illegal scouting combine), they brought a good young team to their new city, and treated the home fans to a 5-2 win in their first ever game.
The good vibes carried through for the majority of this first three months, and when the players all headed home for the Christmas break they were two points back of the Western Conference’s second wild-card position. They had lost the final two games going in, but, since a 6-2 loss to the Washington Capitals on November 18, had gone 9-4-3, with none of those losses by more than a single goal.
As we’ve seen often in recent years, the league’s upstart teams seem to fly too close to the sun in the middle part of the schedule and can’t maintain that altitude the remainder of the season. We’ve seen an extreme example already with the Buffalo Sabres losing 13 consecutive games, and now Utah has won just two of the eight games since the league’s resumption on December 27.
| Canadiens | Statistics | Utah HC |
|---|---|---|
| 20-18-4 | Record | 18-17-7 |
| 48.7% (23rd) | Scoring-chances-for % | 52.4% (9th) |
| 2.95 (18th) | Goals per game | 2.79 (25th) |
| 3.29 (26th) | Goals against per game | 2.93 (13th) |
| 21.9% (15th) | PP% | 21.7% (15th) |
| 81.9% (9th) | PK% | 80.9% (13th) |
| 0-0-1 | Head-to-Head Record | 1-0-0 |
As if that weren’t enough to deal with for the team, it recently lost Dylan Guenther, its top goal-scorer, who is out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. We can imagine what Montreal’s offence would look like without Cole Caufield, and we just witnessed how difficult a time the power play has now when Patrik Laine’s shot is taken away as an option, so this is a significant loss for Utah.
It’s a particularly crushing blow to a team that can list goal-scoring as its biggest weakness. Utah allows under three goals per game, as most of the clubs in post-season spots do, but they only score 2.79 each game. Since Christmas, they’ve scored more than two goals one time.
This will be the first non-playoff team Montreal plays since visiting the Chicago Blackhawks on January 3, and we know how that went for the Habs: their only regulation loss in their past eight games. Given the way the other teams in the Eastern Conference wild-card race are playing, the Canadiens can’t leave these two points in Utah before another stretch versus top teams. They need to keep playing the same way they have for most of the past month, and let their superior offence take care of the rest.
