Canadiens Lineup

Mike Hoffman – Nick Suzuki – Tyler Toffoli

Josh Anderson – Christian Dvorak – Brendan Gallagher

Artturi Lehkonen – Jake Evans – Joel Armia

Michael Pezzetta – Cedric Paquette – Alex Belzile

Ben Chiarot – Jeff Petry

Brett Kulak – David Savard

Alexander Romanov – Chris Wideman

Jake Allen – Sam Montembeault

Sami Niku, Adam Brooks

Jonathan Drouin (upper body), Mathieu Perreault (eye), Joel Edmundson (undisclosed), Carey Price (knee), Paul Byron (hip), Shea Weber (multiple injuries)

Game Report

So how shall we describe tonight’s game? The Canadiens played a strong first period taking a lead to the dressing room at the first intermission. The Canadiens third line made up of Artturi Lehkonen, Jack Evans and Joel Armia dominated their shifts and shutdown the Kings top line led by Anze Kopitar.

Evans scored a highlight reel goal in the third period, Lehkonen had two assists and Kopitar recorded a minus-2 rating in his 24 minutes of icetime.

But the bottom line: the Canadiens lost again. They have just three wins in 14 games this season.

So what happened?

Bad goaltending for starters.

A soft goal given up by Jake Allen in the first five minutes of the second period gave Los Angeles life. The Kings went on to rule the second period after Montreal had controlled the first frame. 

But the real dagger was the goal allowed by Allen six seconds into the third period. Alex Iafallo‘s shot had no business getting past an NHL goaltender.

In addition, Marc Bergevin‘s key off-season acquisitions have been failures. It remains a mystery that Cedric Paquette keeps finding his way back into the lineup after such a consistently poor season. Paquette left the game in the second period with an injury. 

But Paquette is far from the best example.

With his back against the wall, Bergevin significantly overpaid for a third-line centre in Christian Dvorak. The 25-year-old Dvorak has not lived up to the hype. He has scored just once in 14 games and has a minus-14 rating, worst among forwards in the NHL.

In 23 minutes of icetime tonight, Dvorak’s line was dominated with two shots for and 11 against.

Upon the acquisition of David Savard, Bergevin and Dom Ducharme spoke about the St-Hyacinthe native matching Shea Weber‘s style of play and being able to log a good portion of his minutes. It was a pipe dream.

Savard has played poorly and was victimized tonight on the King’s two goals in regulation hampered by his lack of footspeed, agility and positioning.

Up Next

Were there positives to take away from this game? Of course.

Ducharme has to be happy with the play of his third line. Lehkonen and Armia have been two of the Canadiens strongest players game in and game out. There were several glimpses of Nick Suzuki‘s magic tonight. Alexander Romanov‘s thunderous check in the third period changed the momentum leading to the game-tying goal.

But we’re grasping at straws, because those beautiful moments were obviously not enough to make up for the abundance of poor performances and general fragility of the team.

In the final game of their homestand, the Canadiens host the Calgary Flames on Thursday night at the Bell Centre.

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