First period
- This seems like a waste of a Samuel Montembeault start. Unless the Edmonton Oilers have specifically requested to see Jake Allen play on Saturday.
- Not the overwhelming start I expected from Montreal.
- Now the Canadiens are trailing after a Jayden Struble played the puck from the corner right into the slot. Montembeault couldn’t react to the play in time.
- Clearly upset with his gaffe, Struble throws a heavy hit during his next shift.
- Sean Monahan comes close to extending his goal streak to three games, but Mackenzie Blackwood makes a nice save at the post.
- Josh Anderson gets a breakaway. Misses.
- The fourth line gets a few chances, but just can’t get one to go.
- Fabian Zetterlund makes it 2-0. It’s the fourth time in the last 12 games the Sharks have hit two goals. The first period isn’t done yet.
- That second goal has finally woken Montreal up. Brendan Gallagher scores from the slot.
- The Sharks will take a 2-1 lead into the intermission. I don’t know how the Canadiens responded with that effort after how poorly they played last night.
Second period
- Nick Suzuki gets taken down in the neutral zone while building up speed to join the rush. I guess the officials felt that was just a normal thing to happen and let the play continue.
- Cole Caufield can’t figure out what to do in the offensive zone now that Suzuki has shifted to the board game that Juraj Slafkovský is thriving with. He just gets pinned on the boards when he tries to play that way. He found success by hanging back and stealing pucks from those battles last season.
- Jordan Harris takes down his man, and goes to the box for the game’s first penalty.
- Montreal is just scrambling around the defensive zone on the penalty kill and in the moments after it ends. The team needs a defence coach in a bad way.
- Canadiens being outshot 16-13. I don’t know what the players are up to.
- The crowd is just kind of stunned by what it’s seeing in this period. Shots are 11-2 San Jose.
- Montreal finally puts one shift together late with the top line on the ice. The best chances are missed, however.
- Nikita Okhotiuk scores his second NHL goal in his 44th NHL games. It’s 3-1 Sharks. This is … not good.
- Joel Armia takes a penalty with less that two minutes to go. It’s a short power-play, because Rafaël Harvey-Pinard gets grabbed as he tries to join a rush with Jake Evans.
- Montreal had big plans for the four-on-four stint, but kept leaving the puck behind as they tried to make plays.
- No boos from the crowd. Just shocked silence.
Second intermission
- Frankie Corrado is doing the intermission segments in addition to the colour commentary. He’s he hardest-working person at the Bell Centre tonight.
Third period
- The top line has a good shift to open the third.
- Montreal has more of an element of urgency here, but it’s all at the individual level and not as a five-man unit.
- Now the Sharks are back in control.
- Jesse Ylönen runs too obvious a pick with the game at four-on-four and goes to the box. He must have been watching some basketball recently because that’s always a penalty in hockey.
- Two of the Canadiens’ best chances of the game come at three-on-four, first with a Suzuki breakaway, and then a two-on-one with Mike Matheson and Kaiden Guhle.
- Montreal pulls Montembeault with six minutes to play.
- It results in one goal as Matheson blasts one off the Anderson screen in front.
- It doesn’t result in a second. Those last six minutes are how the first period should have been played. Canadiens lose, to the San Jose Sharks, 3-2 in regulation.
- The season is now half done, and the Canadiens have a record 17-18-6. Last season, the second wild-card team needed 92 points to make the playoffs. To get to that number, the Habs would need to go 24-13-4 in the final 41 games. Had they beaten the Sabres and Sharks in these recent games, that would have been 22-15-4, or about four wins more than a .500 mark. It’s just been a killer sequence for the team after things looked so positive on the road trip.
EOTP 3 Stars
3) The demons have never bothers
2) Typiical Habs
1) The only good part of the night
