Canadiens Lineup

Cole Caufield – Nick Suzuki – Sean Monahan

Evgenii Dadonov – Christian Dvorak – Brendan Gallagher

Jonathan Drouin – Kirby Dach – Josh Anderson

Rem Pitlick – Jake Evans – Mike Hoffman

Kaiden Guhle – David Savard

Arber Xhekaj – Chris Wideman

Jordan Harris – Johnathan Kovacevic

Jake Allen – Sam Montembeault

Michael Pezzetta, Corey Schueneman

Carey Price (knee), Paul Byron (hip), Joel Edmundson (back), Logan Mailloux (shoulder), Emil Heineman (finger), Mike Matheson (abdominal strain), Joel Armia (upper-body), Juraj Slafkovsky (upper-body)

Game Report

On Thursday night, Habs fans were flying high, having witnessed Juraj Slafkovsky’s first goal, a TKO by Arber Xhekaj and a Datsyukian goal by the captain all leading to a dominating win. Tonight, they were brought back to reality.

The Dallas Stars are a very good team, who move the puck quickly with precision and who have a superb young goaltender who remains unbeaten in four starts this season. 

And the Stars also have a 38-year-old veteran who loves playing against the Canadiens. His hat-trick was the margin of victory for the visitors this evening.

Dallas forced the Canadiens to make mistakes. Young Canadiens were caught out of position and made uncharacteristic turnovers. Veteran Habs, not committed to a two-way game, were exploited. For good measure Stars forwards played a physical game executing a heavy forecheck.

And Dallas dominated special teams going perfect on the penalty-kill and two-for-three on the power-play. It was a complete victory for the visitors reminding Habs fans just how much work is ahead to be considered a contender.

On the positive side Mike Hoffman calmed the criticism scoring his first goal of the season. Arber Xhekaj, proved that he could do more than drop the gloves scoring the first goal of his brief NHL career.

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