Habs News: Montreal Canadiens Week in Review, Injuries to Paul Byron and Jonathan Drouin, Max Domi at Centre, Artturi Lehkonen Contributions
ROCKET SPORTS MEDIA | LAVAL, QC. — In last week’s column, I wrote that the Canadiens needed to collect a minimum of five of the six points over the course of the week. They ended up with one point.
It might have sounded unrealistic but considering their opponents and their placement in the standings, it was necessary. If Montreal misses the playoffs, this stretch of losses will be remembered as a missed opportunity.
On Tuesday, the Habs blew a 2-1 lead and allowed four answered goals to the Blue Jackets to go on to a 5-2 loss. “I thought we played a good 40 minutes. We didn’t manage to take the lead, but we were still in good position when it was 2-2. The last 20 minutes weren’t up to par,” commented Shea Weber following the game.
The following night, Montreal allowed two unanswered goals to Ottawa on their way to a 2-1 overtime loss. “Laziness on the part of our forwards in overtime cost us a point,” said Claude Julien. He went to mention that the coaching staff counted four mistakes on the play that led to Brady Tkachuk‘s game winning goal. As soon as the goal was scored, Tomas Tatar, who lost the foot race against Tkachuk, gave the death stare to Nick Suzuki.
On Saturday, the Canadiens took a 4-0 lead against the Rangers in the first 23 minutes of play, and ended up losing the game 6-5 at the Bell Centre. It seems like the Blue Shirts got their revenge from February 2008, when the Habs came back to beat them after trailing 5-0.
“After three games without a win, we should have been hungry. We shouldn’t let these things happen. It’s unacceptable… The urgency to score isn’t bad. The urgency to defend isn’t good enough. That’s where we’ve got to get better,” said Julien post game.
As much as the four-goal lead stands out from Saturday, Montreal blew a lead in all three loses last week. The coach felt that they were the better team in the game against the Blue Jackets and the Senators, but that doesn’t matter in the standings. The Canadiens have gone four consecutive games without a win, collecting a total of two points in that stretch.
There are three more home games on the schedule this week to conclude the five-game home stand. The Bruins visit on Tuesday, the Devils on Thursday and the Flyers on Saturday afternoon, before a trip to play Boston on Sunday.
The Habs are currently hanging on to a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. In order to stay in a playoff spot, they need to get at least five of the eight points this week. Is this attainable? Probably not, but they put themselves in this situation.
This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which has served as a measure of a team’s probability to make the playoffs. Rick and Joe discussed this on Saturday’s Canadiens Connection. You can listen here: Canadiens Connection Podcast ep. 59 | Habs News, Domi, Suzuki, Drouin, Byron
Next week’s Habs Notepad will look at this topic too.
Injuries to Byron and Drouin
The organization announced that both Jonathan Drouin and Paul Byron will miss significant time due to injury. Drouin underwent wrist surgery that will require a minimum of eight weeks to recover and Byron is expected to be sidelined four weeks following knee surgery.
Drouin’s offensive contribution will be missed during his recovery time, meaning that others will need to replace his production. Drouin had 15 points in 19 games but just three points in November.
Byron hasn’t had a good start to the season collecting one goal and three assists in 19 games. We haven’t seen him use his speed to create offensive chances and he has struggled on the penalty-kill. This is the fifth significant injury suffered by Byron in the last 19 months.
Since April 2018, Byron has had shoulder injury, forearm injury, upper body injury in the fight with MacKenzie Weegar, wrist injury, and finally the knee injury from last week. That is concerning to me.
Domi on the Wing or at Centre?
When Jesperi Kotkaniemi returned from injury on November 16th, Julien decided to move Max Domi to the left wing of the second line with Nick Suzuki playing in the middle and Joel Armia to the right.
At the time, Domi hadn’t scored in five games, and scored only one goal in fourteen games. I think that move was a combination of trying to get Domi going, and to reward Suzuki for his play.
The results of that experiment weren’t necessarily successful as Domi collected one assist, and his first eight penalty minutes of the season in his next three games. Following the game against the Devils, Domi admitted costing his team one point due to indiscipline. “Absolutely” said the coach post-game when asked if he agreed.
“Max Domi doesn’t skate as good as when he plays at centre,” explained Julien on Friday. “From what I have seen, he’s better at centre than on the wing.”
Domi has played on the wing when he was with the London Knights and Arizona Coyotes. However had his best season last year, when he played centre for the Canadiens.
It’s tough to determine with certainty the cause of his recent slump. “There was zero frustration on his end, it’s us by watching him play, we see that he can’t exploit his speed,” said the coach on Friday when asked if his player was frustrated on playing on the wing.
Domi’s return to centre on Saturday and being reunited with Artturi Lehkonen was a success against the Rangers. The line of Domi, Lehkonen and Nick Suzuki tallied eight points, with Max contributing two goals and one assist. It was the first time in 10 games that he put the puck in the net.
I’m not a NHL coach, but if I were, I’d keep that line intact for Tuesday’s game.
Lehkonen an All Around Player
Scoring goals is not the sum total of Artturi Lehkonen’s contributions to the Canadiens. “I’d like to see Lehkonen score more than he is now, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t playing good hockey,” said the coach before the game.
As we saw on Saturday, Lehkonen has a great shot, which led him to scoring his fourth and fifth goals of the season. That was his seventh multi-goal game of his career.
“We don’t always need three players that are offensive on a line, because we need players that can bring certain things to a line. We’re not putting Lehkonen on that line because he’s a 30-goal scorer, we put him there cause he works hard in the corners and he comes out with the puck, forechecking, he creates opportunities for his line, and that’s what he hope that he will do” said Julien to explain his decision to move him into the second line.
Julien owes his player a favour, because he made his coach look good for playing him in the top-six.
By Chris G., Senior Writer
All Habs Hockey Magazine
Copyright © 2019 Rocket Sports
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