CANADIENS
Montreal

4-1

MAPLE LEAFS
Toronto

Lineup

Forward lines and defense pairings: 

[one_half]Pacioretty- Plekanec – Gallagher
Galchenyuk – Eller – Andrighetto
De la Rose – Danault – Byron
Mitchell – McCarron – Smith-Pelly[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Markov- Subban
Emelin – Pateryn
Bartley – Barberio
[/one_half_last]

Goaltenders:

Condon
Scrivens

Scratches:  Morgan Ellis, Lucas Lessio
Injured reserve:  Carey Price, Daniel Carr, Brian Flynn, Jeff Petry, David Desharnais, Tom Gilbert

Game Report

This game had all of the makings of an IceCaps vs Marlies marchup. With the rebuild in full motion in Toronto the lineup was heavily influenced by the farm team. On the Canadiens side, eight players in the lineup had spent time in the AHL this season with two more as healthy scratches in the press box.

Consequently, it was a sloppily-played game filled with turnovers and broken plays. A yes, a few little gems too.

It didn’t start well. A bad pinch by Alexei Emelin, poor coverage by Paul Byron and a rebound kicked to the slot by Mike Condon led to an early goal for the Leafs. Yes, another early game goal allowed by Condon.

But with youth comes resiliency. Enter Michael McCarron who in his limited icetime had five shots on goal, four hits and his first NHL point. It was also a special night for Greg Pateryn who had his first point in the big league.

The line that thoroughly dominated on every shift was Lars Eller with Alex Galchenyuk and Sven Andrighetto. While trade rumours continue to swirl about two-thirds of this line, it is exciting for fans to think about the long-term potential of such a dynamic group of players.

After napping for the first 40 minutes, the first line came to life in the third with Max Pacioretty picking up two goals.

The Canadiens head out on a western road trip starting in San Jose on trade deadline Monday.

~~~

▲     Greg Pateryn, Michael McCarron, Lars Eller, Andrei Markov, Alex Galchenyuk, Brendan Gallagher, Jacob De la Rose, Torrey Mitchell,

▼

1. Mike Condon  MTL
2. Max Pacioretty  MTL
3. Lars Eller  MTL

• “We’ve just got to string together some games here, and we’ve done that the last four, getting some points, and we’ve just got to keep it rolling, and the challenge will only get harder as we head out to the west.“

Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock

• “PA (Friday) had a tough day, then today the trainers and him said he was playing and obviously that didn’t help us. Then when (Froese) broke his hand, that really hurt us. The bottom line is we were in the game, it was 2-1 going into the third, we were set up to have success. Pacioretty made a real nice play pushing off Morgan Rielly for the one goal and I thought that was kind of the dagger right there.”

Quotes courtesy of NHL.com

⭐THREE STARS: 1 – Joel Hanley, 2 – Charles Hudon, 3 – Bud Holloway. #IceCaps beat the #Crunch 5-1. @IceCapsReport

— Amy Johnson (@FlyersRule) February 28, 2016

No challenge this time, @smithpelly23 makes it 2-1 for the Canadiens on #HockeyNight.#RGCL #GamePlus #StarCam pic.twitter.com/qAz1RRR3q4

— Rogers NHL LIVE (@RogersNHLLive) February 28, 2016

#Habs look to win 10 straight vs the #Leafs for first time since 1958.

Here's a peek at the numbers. pic.twitter.com/uLCvchyK3Y

— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) February 28, 2016

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