All Habs GameDay: Tuesday March 19, 2013

On this day in hockey history… 1991 – Brett Hull became the third player in NHL history to score 80 goals in a season, in a 2-1 St. Louis win over Washington. Hull, who finished with 86 goals, joined Wayne Gretzky (three times) and Mario Lemieux.

PROJECTED LINE COMBINATIONS
(Will be updated following game day skate.)

Michael Ryder has used up his healing potions and is back in the lineup against the Sabres.
Gabriel Dumont was bumped down to the fourth line. Colby Armstrong takes his place with Eller and Galchenyuk.
Rene Bourque participated in the game day skate wearing a ‘no-contact’ jersey.
Mike Blunden has been re-assigned to the Hamilton Bulldogs.

Forwards

Michael Ryder – Tomas Plekanec – Brian Gionta
Max Pacioretty – David Desharnais – Brendan Gallagher
Alex Galchenyuk – Lars Eller – Colby Armstrong
Travis Moen – Ryan White – Gabriel Dumont

Defensemen

Andrei Markov – Alexei Emelin
Josh Gorges – P.K. Subban
Francis Bouillon – Jarred Tinordi

Goalies

Carey Price, Peter Budaj

Scratches

Rene Bourque (concussion), Raphael Diaz (concussion), Yannick Weber (knee), Tomas Kaberle, Brandon Prust (shoulder separation)

No updates at this time.

Forwards

Thomas Vanek – Cody Hodgson – Jason Pominville
Steve Ott – Tyler Ennis – Ville Leino
Marcus Foligno – Kevin Porter – Brian Flynn
Drew Stafford – Jochen Hecht – Nathan Gerbe

Defensemen

Christian Ehrhoff – Tyler Myers
Jordan Leopold – Robyn Regehr
Mark Pysyk – Mike Weber

Goalies

Ryan Miller – Jhonas Enroth

Scratches

Patrick Kaleta, John Scott, Andrej Sekera, Alexander Sulzer

TOP SCORERS

 PROJECTED GOALTENDERS
(Updated following game day skate.)

No updates at this time.

► Ryan Miller is not a fan of shortened seasons: 

• Things are really not going Ryan Miller’s way this season.
• This past week, he came out to face the media and criticized Patrick Kaleta, who had allegedly complained about being a healthy scratch.
• Miller later apologized under the pretext he had been mislead with regards to what Kaleta had said.
• Tough times for a team who’s way down on the bottom looking up and has only 5 wins in their past 17 games.
• Back to Miller, statistically speaking, he’s unrecognizable this season.
• He has yet to reach ten victories, ranks 38th in goals against average, 25th in save percentage, 31st in even-strength goals against average and still hasn’t obtained a shutout.
• Okay, sure, the Buffalo Sabres are not a very good team, especially at defense, but still, this is very un-Miller-like.
• Or maybe he just doesn’t like shortened seasons…

► Habs face-off report:

• Guys who take a lot of face-offs:

Tomas Plekanec (295/585): 50.4 
David Desharnais (212/244): 47.7
Lars Eller (146/296): 49.3

• Guys who don’t take a lot of face-offs:

Ryan White (78/147): 53.1 
Alex Galchenyuk (52/118): 44.1

• The new guy:

Gabriel Dumont (18/26): 69.2 

• For the Buffalo Sabres, Cody Hodgson leads the team in overall face-offs taken with 549, but only has a winning percentage of 46.1.
• Steve Ott comes in second with 283 face-offs taken, however he’s averaging 58.6 in the circle.
• As teams, the Canadiens rank 22nd in the league at 48.4 while the Sabres rank 29th at 45.9.
• When you look at the standings for face-off percentage, you wonder how meaningful a stat this even is…

► That very important first goal:

• The Montreal Canadiens know how important it is to score that first goal in a hockey game.
• In 28 games played this season, the Habs have scored the first goal in 21 of those match-ups.
• Of those 21 match-ups, the Habs won 15 of them in regulation.

► Rookie Watch:

• Wednesday night against the Senators, Brendan Gallagher picked up a goal and he now has 8 goals and 8 assists for 16 points on the season.
• Alex Galchenyuk was left off the scoresheet again and still totals 3 goals and 10 assists for 13 points on the season.
• Respectively, they rank third and sixth amongst rookies in the league.

Top 10 NHL Rookies / Total Points

1. Cory Conacher (TBL): 7G, 14A, 21PTS
   
2. Jonathan Huberdeau (FLA): 12G, 6A, 18PTS
3. Brendan Gallagher (MTL): 8G, 8A, 16PTS
4. Justin Schultz (EDM): 5G, 10A, 15PTS
5. Nail Yakupov (EDM): 6G, 8A, 14PTS
6. Brandon Saad (CHI): 4G, 10A, 14PTS
7. Alex Galchenyuk (MTL): 3G, 10A, 13PTS
8. Vladimir Tarasenko (STL): 6G, 7A, 13PTS
9. Alex Killorn (TBL): 4G, 8A, 12PTS
10. Dougie Hamilton (BOS): 3G, 9A, 12PTS

Colby Armstrong on his first goal of the season:

“I had quite a few chances early in the season. They went away a little bit then they started coming back again,” Armstrong said after the game. “It felt good to get one and help our team out.”

Michel Therrien realizes that people don’t realize what he feels they should realize about Colby Armstrong, probably:

“A guy like Colby Armstrong brings more to the team than people probably realize. Getting his first goal in a Canadiens jersey probably takes a little bit of the pressure off.” defended Therrien. “Colby’s been getting some great scoring chances lately and when you get scoring chances that much you know it’s eventually going to go in. He scored a big one tonight and you could see how happy the guys on the bench were for him.”

Carey Price on how the team “Greased it out”:

“We have the term ‘Grease it Out’,” explained Price on how his team approaches road games. “We just try to keep things simple and we’re a really good cycling team so we keep our feet moving and make it hard on their defensemen. It’s nice to see different guys contributing and it was really good to see Army get one,” added Price. “It was a heck of a shot. He’s working hard. Everyone’s doing their job correctly and we’re reaping the benefits right now.”