After giving a night off to most of his regulars on Thursday night, Martin St-Louis got the big guns out tonight. The Montreal Canadiens had all of their top nine (aside from Christian Dvorak, who Owen Beck replaced), three veteran blueliners, three of their best prospects on the backend, and their goalie tandem from last season.
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Meanwhile, the Toronto Maple Leafs left their Core Four at home. Morgan Reilly was nowhere to be seen, and the most recognizable names on their roster were Easton Cowan and Matthew Knies.
However, it didn’t take five minutes for the Canadiens to lose three players. David Reinbacher had to retreat to the room after a Knies hit 13 seconds into the game. Then, while on the power play, Patrik Laine received a knee-on-knee hit thanks to career AHLer Cedric Pare and stayed down. The big Finn had to be helped off the ice, and it looked like a severe injury.
Pare didn’t get a penalty on the play, so Arber “The Sheriff” Xhekaj took matters into his own hands and jumped him without even taking his gloves off, earning himself a truckload of penalties and the rest of the night off. Just like Reinbacher and Laine, mind you, the Canadiens announced after the first that neither would be back.
Related: Déjà Vu: Canadiens Lose Patrik Laine Four Minutes Into Saturday Night Game
After the game, Nick Suzuki said he thought it should have been a penalty, but the referees believed it was accidental.
Selected by Boston in the sixth round of the 2017 draft, Pare has never played a single NHL game. After being drafted, he spent three more years in the QMJHL before graduating to the ECHL and the AHL. This is just about the worst possible scenario for a team icing NHLers: seeing one of them taken out by a player who will never play in the NHL.
Understandably, tempers flared on the ice. On top of Xhekaj, Juraj Slafkovsky and Josh Anderson also dropped the gloves. While it’s easy to get frustrated, the last thing this team needs now is another talented player going down to injury in a meaningless pre-season tilt (because, really, it can’t be called a match right now).
Forty minutes in, Nicholas Robertson remains the only player to have found the back of the net. It seems he decided to hurt the right team tonight, unlike Thursday, when his stick push sent Willam Nylander headfirst into Christian Dvorak’s knee.
Through six power play opportunities, the Canadiens have obtained a grand total of six shots. They just…