The Montreal Canadiens came to town on a two-game losing streak to face a Pittsburgh Penguins team struggling this season and sitting in last place in the Metropolitan division.
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Martin St-Louis’ patience ran out after Thursday’s debacle in Washington, and for the first time of his young coaching career, the bench boss submitted his charges to a punitive practice on Friday. The kind of training session that includes a lot of skating and very little pucks.
Just like Thursday, the Canadiens played a prudent game in the first frame, only allowing five pucks to reach Samuel Montembeault’s net. The visitors blocked 10 shots, sacrificing the body for the good of the team, showing they heard their coach’s message, at least to an extent.
Unfortunately for Montreal, the one big mistake they made came to bite them right back. Mike Matheson turned the puck over to Rickard Rakell who found Sidney Crosby in acres of space. The Pens captain doesn’t need that much space or time to pick a spot, and just like that it was 1-0 Pittsburgh.
Crosby’s crew dominated the second frame, adding 16 shots to their total, including five in the first five minutes (as many as they got in the first 20 minutes of play). The host looked very confident and comfortable in the Canadiens’ zone, setting up shop as if they were on the power play every other attack.
Montreal got its first two power plays of the game in the middle frame, but couldn’t convert. Rushing their play oftentimes and making obvious passes which were easy to cut for the experienced Penguins.
Unfortunately for Montreal, their penalty kill wasn’t as effective as the Pens’ one and when David Savard took a delay of game penalty, Crosby took a quick shot from far out to beat an unsuspecting Montembeault and double the locals’ lead. Once again, the goal came shortly after a faceoff was lost, and it was far from the only one. 40 minutes in, the Canadiens had lost 62.1% of the draws, Dach being the most efficient up to that point with a 40% success rate.
It’s easy to understand why St-Louis decided to give Josh Anderson another go on the top line, with Alex Newhook and Kirby Dach struggling to find their game, Juraj Slafkovsky’s talent was needed on the second line.
Emil Heineman didn’t raise any eyebrows in his short lived first line audition, so rewarding Anderson who’s been working like a horse alongside Jake Evans and Brendan Gallagher made sense, but unfortunately, the power forward…