10 Thoughts: Habs fall 4-3 to the Rangers’ power play

The Canadiens’ Saturday matchup this week was an unusual matinee affair, with a 1 PM start. This was explained by the location at the Madison Square Garden, where Cornell played Quinnipiac in the evening, requiring the Habs and the Rangers to complete their game well before that one.

The Rangers were able to snap a five-game losing streak with a late Kaapo Kakko goal to claim a 4-3 home-ice victory in a rough-and-tumble affair. The bleu, blanc, et rouge played a credible game, but once again fell short of victory, this time due to bleeding goals while on the penalty kill.

Canadiens Lines

Caufield – Suzuki – Newhook
Slafkovsky – Dvorak – Gallagher
Roy – Dach – Anderson
Heineman – Evans – Armia

Hutson – Matheson
Guhle – Barron
Xhekaj – Savard

Montembeault
Primeau

Ten Thoughts

1) Josh Anderson dropped the gloves with Jacob Trouba two minutes in, as payback for Trouba’s heavy hit on Justin Barron the last time the teams met. Anderson, not well-known as a pugilist, appeared to land a far better set of punches as he stood up for his teammate. Sam Carrick tried to challenge Arber Xhekaj at the beginning of the second, but the biggest scrum was at the end of the second. After Kirby Dach was pushed into Jonathan Quick, the Rangers goalie jumped the Slovak forward, triggering a melee that resulted in seven penalties–including a double minor to Slafkovsky, who was certainly not the instigator.

2) After a solid start, Emil Heineman was caught holding Chris Kreider’s stick during some Rangers pressure. Worse yet, sixty seconds into the penalty, Mike Matheson cleared the puck over the glass, giving the Rangers a full minute of five-on-three play. Arguably, Heineman was preventing a scoring chance, and Matheson’s shot would have glanced off the glass four times out of five. But two consecutive issues often result in bigger problems.

3) And, indeed, the New York power play is strong, and five players on three makes it that much stronger. The Rangers kept passing the puck to Artemi Panarin–can we call him the Rangers’ Caufield?–and on his third shot attempt, the Russian veteran hit pay dirt, glancing a shot off the crossbar into the net, above Samuel Montembeault’s glove, giving the Rangers a 1-0 lead.

4) There really was no perceivable momentum shift from the Panarin goal, and the Habs continued to take the game to the Rangers. This finally paid off three minutes later, as the Canadiens were applying sustained pressure in the New York zone. Led by Brendan Gallagher, who won multiple puck battles on his own, they kept up the pressure, and at 11:47 Mike Matheson snapped a Gallagher pass into the far side of the net to tie things up.

5) The last few minutes of the period have far too often been a problem for the Habs this season, and it was no different at the end of the first. While the bleu, blanc, et rouge were attacking when Alex Newhook lost the puck on a bounce off the boards in the Rangers’ zone. The Blueshirts rushed into an odd-man attack, and, just a couple of seconds from the buzzer, scored a go-ahead goal on a Vincent Trocheck tip past Montembeault. Not the way to end a period …

6) With the Rangers on a power play again near the end of the second stanza after the soft roughing call on Anderson, they made it count again. This time it was Mika Zibanejad. The Swedish veteran centre first faked a slap shot, then skated in between the hash marks where Montembeault’s vision was blocked by heavy traffic. Zibanejad’s shot found its way through the skaters in the net and got past the Montreal goaltender, who likely had little chance of seeing it at all. A two-goal lead for the Rangers, then.

7) Cole Caufield brought the Canadiens within one early in the third. The top line was applying pressure in the New York zone–with Alex Newhook, too, doing what he should to keep the play alive–when Kreider started up-ice. However, Nick Suzuki stopped a pass just inside the blue line to create the scoring opportunity. Caufield scored from his usual office space on a Suzuki pass seconds later to make the score 3-2.

8) Prettier yet than the Caufield goal was the Lane Hutson pass to Nick Suzuki, enabling the captain to tap the puck in and tie up the game. Hutson timed the pass perfectly to thread the puck past the blue-shirted defenders and onto the captain’s stick, and tied the game at 3-3. That’s now 13 assists for Hutson, who is within sight of the rookie scoring lead in spite of playing for one of the weakest teams in the league.

9) Dach was playing a solid game, one of his best this season, but with only 2:40 remaining in a tie game, he let his stick move up and onto the face of Zibanejad in a puck battle behind Quick’s net. A shame, as the Habs were creating scoring chances and were fighting for a regulation win. Four minutes in the box took away any chance of that. The Rangers needed more than two minutes to do it, but with 22 seconds left in the final period, Kaapo Kakko–rumoured to be on the trading block–secured it with a one-timer from just outside the blue ice. The real credit goes to Will Cuylle, who won a puck battle in front of the net and was able to get the puck to Kakko. However, either way, it was a goal that won it for the Rangers.

10) Refereeing in the NHL is arguably neither difficult nor a thankful job, but it seems that this time the results were even more of a head-scratcher than usual. Setting the tone for the K’Andre Miller was holding both Caufield and Suzuki in the first minute, with no call at all. Chris Kreider’s interference was ignored. A penalty on Sam Carrick’s challenge to Xhekaj was whistled down while the Habs were on a 3-2 break, when the penalty should have been delayed. Josh Anderson was called for roughing near the end of the second for slightly bumping Ryan Lindgren–and, finally, Slafkovsky was assessed a double minor in the second-period melee started by Jonathan Quick. This surely is at least a season-high for missed calls, one hopes?

HW Habs Three Stars

First Star: Mike Matheson (1g, 0a, 4 shots, +3, 26:17 TOI) showed why he is valuable to the team and can be so in the future, too. On the ice for all three Montreal goals, and only one of the New York ones, and that one on a power play. Could have easily scored another point or two on the night.

Second Star: Nick Suzuki (1g, 1a, 2 shots, +1, 18:56 TOI) was instrumental in creating the play that set up Caufield for a goal, and scored one himself on a Hutson pass. An xGF figure of 86% confirms what the eye saw, that the Canadiens’ captain was his old self again.

Third Star: Lane Hutson (0g, 1a, 2 shots, +2, 21:36 TOI) continues to defy his doubters and show that he can more than hold his own against NHL opposition. He has come from nowhere–at least for people not following the Habs–to become a credible Calder Trophy candidate, and he showed again why that is, handling the puck, dizzying the opponents, and making passes that no one else on the team would be able to make.