First period
- There’s one very small section of fans booing Drouin’s first puck touch.
- Michael Pezzetta takes an early penalty. That won’t give much confidence to Martin St-Louis to play his fourth line more than the seven minutes or so he did on Saturday.
- After some good puck movement and an early missed chance, the Colorado Avalanche get on the board as Ross Colton puts it in.
- A good response from Sean Monahan, Joshua Roy, and Jayden Struble after the goal to carry the puck deep in Avalanche territory. Brendan Gallagher draws a penalty on the next shift.
- On a set play by the members of the top line, Juraj Slafkovský scores at side of net to give each team an early power-play goal.
- The top line follows up its goal with a great shift at five-on-five for a couple of other chances. They don’t want to just playing defence tonight.
- Following a period with teams trading possession, the fourth line comes out and keeps the puck near Colorado’s net, eventually forcing an icing. That was much better than the first one that ended in a penalty.
- The bad news is the Canadiens are on pace to allow 40-plus shots again. The good news is they’re actually outshooting the Avalanche 16-15. Not many dangerous chances in that period, though.
- According to Natural Stat Trick, the Canadiens only failed to get three of their shot attempts through: 19 attempts, 16 shots.
Second period
- The second period opens with a shot from Cale Makar that gets through a screen made up of Mikko Rantanen and Kaiden Guhle at the top of the crease.
- The Canadiens haven’t had much control of the puck through the opening third of this period. It’s all Colorado.
- The Avalanche hit a post, and that seemed to really alert the Habs to the danger of all this time in their own zone. Jake Evans turns the puck up ice for a rare moment of offensive-zone time.
- Joshua Roy gets Montreal’s first shot of the period near its midpoint.
- Another shift in the offensive zone ends with a bobbled puck by David Savard. Jayden Struble takes a perfect line to cut off Andrew Cogliano’s breakaway, but Joel Armia got his stick in Cogliano’s hands a split second before Struble took the shot away. Armia goes to the box.
- Colorado hits the crossbar, then Rafaël Harvey-Pinard blocks a shot and clears the on-edge puck over the glass. The Avalanche call a timeout to set up a five-on-three play.
- The Habs survive lots of good movement from Colorado’s power play, and now they have a one-goal deficit without Colorado having a challenge. So you can be a bit more aggressive with the offensive blue line … if you can advance the puck that far.
- The Monahan line has another good shift, and Armia just misses on a setup from Roy.
- Momentum had been built, however. Moments after the referee stood by watching Evans’s feet getting taken out by MacKinnon, RHP jammed a puck through the pads of Alexandar Georgiev to tie the game.
- Nick Suzuki fires a powerful wristshot off the post after picking off Samuel Girard in the neutral zone.
Third period
- The period begins with some cherry-picking from Mikko Rantanen who hangs back in the neutral zone and goes in for a chance.
- Shortly afterward, Rantanen goes to the box, giving the Canadiens their second power play of the night.
- They try to set the same thing up as in the first, but Slafkovský can’t convert Suzuki’s pass.
- But on their next chance, Cole Caufield scores on a more traditional shot from the bottom of the circle.
- The threat of the cross-crease pass opened up a little bit of space for the Canadiens’ best shooter.
- Now to apply the lessons from last game and keep Colorado from getting a third.
- Jordan Harris uses his elbow trying to gain some space for himself in a board battle. That will be his seventh minor penalty of the season.
- The penalty-kill structure makes much more sense with a player always rotating down to have two near the crease. No more of those down-low two-on-ones. Everything was on the perimeter that power play for one of the best teams at zipping the puck through seams.
- Evans gets shoved to prevent him from racing onto a loose puck. He goes to the box for embellishment. Maybe if the ref had called the obvious trip on him in the second he wouldn’t have felt the need to show that he’d been interfered with.
- At four-on-four, Devon Toews ties the game with a shot off Struble’s stick.
- Caufield reloads at centre ice, builds up speed, dekes around a defender, and then just catches Georgiev’s blocker on a far-side shot. That’s some good stuff.
- Montreal’s top line was played well in man-to-man coverage, and still managed to get a good shot. Caufield has been able to fight through some checks in this game to round out that line.
- Joel Armia puts Montreal on top after an energetic follow-up shift to the top-line’s effort.
- The defence needs to hold off Colorado for four minutes to get a win.
- Caufield shot the puck so hard he snapped the top end of the shaft off. That was another nice setup by the top forwards.
- Georgiev goes to the bench with two minutes to play.
- Makar slapped the ice with a fake shot that fooled even Suzuki. It led to a good chance.
- The Canadiens get three clears in the final minute to keep the Avalanche from getting any chance to tie the game, and win 4-3.
- An extra long blast of the horn for that effort.
EOTP 3 Stars
3) The Toronto office is frantically thumbing through the rulebook
2) Is that some type of tampering?
1) Very good, especially for the development of Guhle, Struble, and the top line
