Posted by Kyle Roussel
AllHabs.blogspot.com
AllHabs.blogspot.com
Fresh off my hopeful prediction of a 7-game triumph over the Bruins, here are my brief thoughts on what I believe to be the keys to success for the Habs:
1- Goaltending: Carey Price has to be consistently very good, if not brilliant. A perfect example was the season finale in Pittsburgh. Price stopped 38 of 41 shots for a terrific .927 save percentage. Good enough, right? Well not if he gives up goals like he did to Malkin and Letang. Fat rebounds and getting beat cleanly on non-screened shots are labeled as “softies” and are killers to playoff success. He’s got to eliminate his season-long habit of giving up a soft goal per game. He’ll probably need to steal a game or two, something he has not done a lot of this year.
2- Special teams: The power play. If the Bruins are going to continue to intimidate and punish the Canadiens physically, then the Canadiens better hope that the officials see things their way and call the game as such. The Canadiens scored 3 goals on the power play on Thursday vs Boston after getting bullied by the Bruins. If the Bruins want to continue to play this way – why wouldn’t they? – then the Canadiens will have to make them pay.
The penalty kill: Chris Higgins and Glen Metropolit have been good recently, and they will have to continue to be so. The other advantage to their good penalty killing roles is that it keeps the big offensive guns fresh for 5-on-5 or power play situations.
3- Team defense: Oh brother Andrei, where art thou? Without him, the Canadiens defense looks sloppy and shaky. Schneider is sucking up the pain of a tough shoulder injury to keep the power play aloft, but he’s only so useful in even strength and PK situations.
4- Coaching: Will Gainey be able to out-coach the man he fired in 2006? I believe Gainey’s strategy will be to push the pace of the game, use skill, speed and special teams to beat the Bruins. Inserting Georges Laraque and/or Gregory Stewart will do nothing but distract from the strategy. The loud mouthes of the media will come out in droves if Julien is able to knock off Gainey’s team, especially this year.
5- Secondary Scoring: Tomas Plekanec has to pick up the Kostitsyn brothers and begin to put up points. There’s no 2 ways about it. He’s been absent almost all year, has promised to show up for the playoffs. He has to honour that promise.
Those are 5 big-ticket items. It looks like hockey 101 to me, but the Canadiens have been wildly inconsistent this year and they need to put all the pieces together now. If you’re reading between the lines, I’m suggesting that the Canadiens need to do a lot of things that they have not done all year long. This is why my head says Boston, while my heart says Habs. This is what makes the playoffs great. The playoffs are fertile ground for upsets, and they occur every year. With history on our side, why can’t the Canadiens do it again?