Game 63: Montreal Canadiens @ Carolina Hurricanes
Start time: 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Hurricanes region: Bally Sports South
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+
Not only have the Canadiens not been embarrassed on this road trip, as was the fear when it began, they’ve matched the level of play of the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Nashville Predators. The story was very similar in the three games played — a good first period, major issues getting started in the second, but managing to be tied 3-3 after regulation. Montreal did break a trend of shootout losses to start the trip by ending Tuesday’s game in overtime before it got to that point.
Nashville had the measure of Montreal’s top line with its own counterpart as Filip Forsberg, Ryan O’Reilly, and Gustav Nyquist all scored in the game. The Predators went into the contest with their forward depth contributing on a nightly basis, but Montreal won the battle of the bottom nine with markers from Brendan Gallagher and Joshua Roy, and a rare lucky bounce for a goal, from David Savard.
With the win, the Canadiens extended a point streak to four games that began with a win over the Arizona Coyotes before they left Montreal. As the trip ends in Raleigh tonight, there’s a chance to take a fifth or sixth of eight possible points from an arduous journey through the Southern United States.
| Canadiens | Statistics | Hurricanes |
|---|---|---|
| 24-28-10 | Record | 36-19-6 |
| 45.1% (29th) | Scoring-chances-for % | 57.3% (1st) |
| 2.79 (27th) | Goals per game | 3.28 (12th) |
| 3.48 (26th) | Goals against per game | 2.75 (7th) |
| 19.1% (22nd) | PP% | 27.0% (3rd) |
| 74.4% (29th) | PK% | 84.1% (3rd) |
| 0-1-0 | Head-to-Head Record | 1-0-0 |
As was set up by Martin St-Louis when Samuel Montembeault got a second straight start to begin the trip, the goaltender will be between the pipes to wrap things up. Despite a good performance versus Florida, he stormed off the ice after Montreal lost to the team that placed him on waivers, and that’s the mood he brings into the game versus the Hurricanes.
Goaltending has often been a sore spot for Carolina, which had them listed as one of the teams interested in Jake Allen earlier in the year. As the season has gone on, the team is getting good performances out of Pyotr Kotchetkov to silence those discussions. A .910 save percentage is good enough to keep Carolina winning, and is better than Allen’s mark or even Montembeault’s this season. Kotchetkov’s .931 save percentage since the All-Star break is seventh-best among goalies to play at least five games. Solving goaltenders hasn’t been much of an issue for Montreal lately, however, as they’ve already earned points against the goalies who rank sixth (Anthony Stolarz) and 10th (Juuse Saros) on that list.
Montreal catches the Hurricanes at a time when their power play, which ranks third in the league this season, has cooled off considerably. They have only six power-play goals since the mid-season pause, and that means they’re not able to post five or six goals as often as they did to start the season. They’ve scored three or fewer on five occasions in the past six matches.
As was the case with Nashville, Carolina is a team that thrives on its depth of scoring, with nine players registering at least 30 points so far, compared to Montreal’s four (Sean Monahan excluded). Of course, they are led as always by the Marc Bergevin-signed Sebastian Aho at the top, who paces the club in both goals and assists.
Montreal will need to do a better job versus Aho and his linemates than they did versus O’Reilly’s trio on Tuesday to keep their point streak going. That’s more easily said than done, however, as Aho has five multi-point performances in his last seven matches versus Montreal, including a high of four assists when these two teams met at PNC Arena back on December 28. It was Andrei Svechnikov who did the most damage on that night with a hat trick, and though he only has 13 total goals this year in 40 games played, he might just be the biggest threat to putting an end to the point streak.
