- It’s rare Sunday night game for the Canadiens and what is a rare busy Sunday in the NHL with 10 games.
First period
- Cayden Priimeau makes a nice early save on Matty Beniers.
- Joel Armia has a chance to open the scoring after a feed from Jake Evans, but is off-balance and can’t get a shot off.
- Players are falling everywhere. It looks like they forget to flood the concrete tonight.
- Juraj Slafkovský extends his point streak to seven games by poking the puck through the pads of Philipp Grubauer to open the scoring. I robbed him of a couple of points saying he was on a five-gamer in the preview today.
- He’s now one of the streak of eight he had a month ago.
- Kaiden Guhle slaps a puck toward the net than Alex Newhook puts a little touch on as it goes past, and that makes it 2-0. Two primary assists for Kaiden Guhle in about six minutes.
- Primeau pounces on a rebound that dropped to a dangerous area. He’s looking sharp in a start that’s actually been pretty good for Seattle as far as shots are concerns, 8-2 in Seattle’s favour.
- Grubauer makes his first save with about eight-and-a-half minutes to play.
- Rafaël Harvey-Pinard is opened like a can of calamari by Penny Oleksiak’s brother, and that’s going to be a Canadiens power play.
- With two points already, Guhle gets to quarterback the second unit.
- Nick Suzuki leads a two-on-one with Cole Caufield. The Kraken do well to block the passing lane, so Suzuki just scored the goal himself, his 28th of the year.
- Mere seconds later, Newhook has evolved into his advanced Twohook form, thanks to a deft little touch-pass from Brendan Gallagher.
- Guhle has another assist on the goal, but that is still only his second because he’s now been given credit for the opening goal. Edmonton isn’t the only western city he enjoys playing in it seems.
- That also means Slafkovský’s point streak is still on six.
- That will be all for Philipp Grubauer he exits to a chorus of boos that the other fans try to drown out. In comes Joey Daccord.
- The horn sounds and more boos follow.
- The predicted low-scoring game is only applying to the home side so far.
Second period
- I’m curious what Montreal’s defensive strategy is with a four-goal lead. Guhle said in his RDS interview that they don’t need any more goals, so Primeau could be busy the rest of the way.
- What the defence is going to do is allow a goal within the opening minute. And we know what the defence looks like with a three-goal lead.
- There will be no third Primeau shutout tonight.
- Seattle’s ‘Kovsky is heading to the box. That will give Montreal’s a shot to get a point that stands.
- But first, Primeau will defend a short-handed three-on-one.
- Instead, Alex gets the hook to even the sides up.
- On their abbreviated power play, Seattle makes it a 4-2 game.
- Montreal is challenging for offside, so they must be rather confident this one is coming back.
- “After review, please reset the clock,” the ref says with a little sass on the verdict. Beniers had skated into the zone after making a pass before the puck crossed the line
- Also, Slafkovský now has credit for an assist on Suzuki’s goals, so seven games it is. Somewhere in range of five to eight in any case.
- Colin White wasn’t sure what he should do on a three-on-once, and in the end he was unable to make a decision.
- The crowd boos as Jordan Harris checks the puck-carrier to the ice, and that alerts the refs to call a slashing minor on Jayden Struble moments later.
- Mike Matheson gets into a one-on-one situation with Tomas Tatar, and that’s bad news for the former Hab. The defenceman blows past, pulls off a nice series of dekes, and then scores under Dacorrd’s pad from a sharp angle. That might be the nicest Habs goal of the season.
- It’s Matheson first ever short-handed goal, which is hard to believe.
- Primeau makes a confident glove save on a rush down the wing. That’s a critical development for his game.
- Primeau makes another save, this one with his cup it seems. He stays down for a second.
- Armia is dummying two defenders, playing keepaway below the goal line.
- David Savard adds a save to his ledger after backing up Primeau. He has half a dozen of those this season. the league is going to start cracking down on Montreal playing two goaltenders at once.
- Montreal entered the period with a four-goal lead and exited with one as well. So a good period even if they did get outshot again. They have as many goals in 40 minutes as they did in the first three games of this trip.
Third period
- Seattle tries to knock the net on top of Primeau to throw him off his game.
- He’s solid enough as the Habs attempt to hang onto this lead in the final period.
- A test is on the way as Josh Anderson heads off for hooking. We probably won’t see Matheson racing away this time.
- The penalty is killed, with 12 more minutes to go.
- Another shot in the cup for Primeau? He might need some additional padding in his pants for next game.
- A two-on-one was a little easier to manage for White,, but his deke to the backhand still went wide of the net.
- Seattle is forced into an icing following the first bit of pressure for Montreal in this period. That will be a momentary break from defending at least.
- The game ends on a delayed penalty to Montreal as the Kraken don’t bother taking the power play. Montreal wins 5-1.
- Primeau joins Montembeault with a .500 record this season. The Canadiens would be nine points from a playoff spot with that mark this season.
- The final game of the trip comes Tuesday night in Colorado.
EOTP 3 Stars
3) Those times are starting to happen quite often
2) We will one day see the final form of Alex Treblehook
1) A little Rat-inspired lyric to stave off the second-period demons
