Game 62: Montreal Canadiens @ Nashville Predators
Start time: **8:00 PM EST / 5:00 PM PST**
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Predators region: Bally Sports South
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+
Montreal added another injury to their list as Colin White is now out. The hope when Kent Hughes made that waiver claim was that he’d acquired a player who could simply fill that role for the rest of the season to give the team four lines to work with, but now is down one centre yet again. The Canadiens are too far from home to bring in reinforcements, so it will be a night of line-juggling for Martin St-Louis.
That’s not an ideal situation when going up against the club on the greatest roll over the past couple of weeks, getting production from most elements of the lineup to score almost five goals per game. Even with their full complement of players on hand to counter such an opponent it would have been tough for Montreal to hang in the contest. Now it’s going to be extremely difficult to go toe-to-toe with essentially three forward lines.
The players who are available don’t just need to buckle down defensively, but find a way to generate more offence than other teams have been able to over Nashville’s eight-game winning streak. In that time they’ve only surrendered 13 goals. The story was similar when the Canadiens battled the Florida Panthers to begin this trip and ended up getting that game to a shootout, so perhaps they can surprise and give the Predators a rare test.
Montreal Canadiens projected lineup
| Left Wing |
Centre |
Right Wing |
| #22 Cole Caufield |
#14 Nick Suzuki |
#20 Juraj Slafkovský |
| #89 Joshua Roy |
#35 Alex Newhook |
#40 Joel Armia |
| #11 Brendan Gallagher |
#71 Jake Evans |
#17 Josh Anderson |
| #70 Tanner Pearson |
#49 Rafaël Harvey-Pinard |
#56 Jesse Ylönen |
| Left Defence |
Right Defence |
| #8 Mike Matheson |
#21 Kaiden Guhle |
| #72 Arber Xhekaj |
#58 David Savard |
| #47 Jayden Struble |
$54 Jordan Harris |
| Starter |
Backup |
| #34 Jake Allen |
#35 Samuel Montembeault |
Injured: Kirby Dach, Christian Dvorak, Colin White, Chris Wideman
Scratched: Johnny Kovacevic, Michael Pezzetta, Cayden Primeau
Nashville Predators projected lineup
| Left Wing |
Centre |
Right Wing |
| Filip Forsberg |
Ryan O’Reilly |
Gustav Nyquist |
| Yakov Trenin |
Colton Sissons |
Cody Glass |
| Mark Jankowski |
Tommy Novak |
Luke Evangelista |
| Cole Smith |
Michael McCarron |
Kiefer Sherwood |
| Left Defence |
Right Defence |
| Roman Josi |
Dante Fabbro |
| Ryan McDonagh |
Luke Schenn |
| Jeremy Lauzon |
Alexandre Carrier |
| Starter |
Backup |
| Juuse Saros |
Kevin Lankinen |
