• Price looked himself under new coach
• Those pesky bye weeks…
• Can Huberdeau save the Panthers’ season?
A former Habs coach returned to Montreal, a defenceman passed Ovechkin in goals, and the Oilers finally have a stud in goal.
Here are five things we learned in the NHL Saturday.
Julien’s effect on Habs
It’s not every day that a first-place team fires its coach. But it is the second time the Montreal Canadiens have turned to head coach Claude Julien to lead the way.
Julien returned to the Montreal bench Saturday as the Habs took on the Winnipeg Jets. The home side lost and perhaps more can be learned in defeat than in victory. Julien certainly emphasized the positives but was revealing in his assessment of his new (old) club.
“You can see lot of nervousness in the group…[a] little lack of confidence right now,” he said after the 3-1 loss. “[We] need to find our confidence here in next couple of days.”
The Canadiens were outshot, out hit, and out drawn in the faceoff circle.
“Certainly there is hope,” Julien said. “[We’re a] much better team than what you saw today. They will be better… I’ll take it as a constructive day for me.”
Of relative concern at times has been the dip in play by goaltender Carey Price whose goals-against average (2.45) and save percentage (.918) are his worst numbers since the 2013 season. Price made 30 saves in this one and won third star honours.
Another player under the microscope during the Michel Therrien era was Alex Galchenyuk who Julien put up on the top line Saturday alongside Max Pacioretty and Alex Radulov. Seventy per cent of Galchenyuk’s shifts started in the offensive zone and he assisted on the Canadiens’ lone goal. He went 2-for-11 in the faceoff circle.
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Burns passes Ovechkin
Read that header again.
With his third two-goal game of the season Saturday, Brent Burns scored his 27th goal of 2016-17, one more than Alex Ovechkin and good for eighth in the entire NHL. Sidney Crosby still leads the league with 31 goals.
The second-highest scoring defenceman is Shea Weber who has 13 goals.
Make that 18 road goals now.
And both goals were uncomplicated yet unbelievable in that they were simply wrist shots from near the blue line. Here’s the first of his pair but trust me that both were almost identical.
I could just go on gushing about ridiculous statistics: Burns’s 63 points are 14 points ahead of Erik Karlsson who sits second in points by defencemen. The bearded wonder is scoring at a rate of 1.07 points per game, fifth best in the NHL among players that have played at least 20 games in 2016-17.
With one more goal, he’ll set a new career-high.
Let’s not go crazy and start nominating Burns for the Hart trophy but there’ll be no Karlsson-Doughty debate this year when it comes to the Norris trophy winner.
Elsewhere in the Sharks-Coyotes game, Arizona honoured its 20-year history in the desert by wearing its psychedelic jerseys. Shane Doan wore a Mike Gartner-signed sweater during the game.
Bye week woes
I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating.
NHL teams are strug-gl-ing coming out of their bye weeks. The five-day break each club will take part in this season is producing a noticeably poor losing record.
A league record of 3-12-4 is bad enough but an 0-8-3 record in February is bruising some team’s chances at playoff positioning, if not disproving that a five-day break in the middle of the season is necessary for the players’ well-being. In fact, some coaches, including Mike Babcock, have decried breaks as a threat to player safety. A compressed schedule due in part to the World Cup has created many more back-to-back games.
The Blackhawks, Capitals, Canadiens, Lightning, and Predators all lost Saturday after their almost week-long sabbaticals. Montreal has a tenuous two-point lead in the Atlantic Division, Tampa is behind five teams for the final wild card spot in the East, and Nashville is desperately holding on to one of the final two wild card spots in the West.
Oilers finally have a rock in goal
It’s been a season of resurgence for the Edmonton Oilers in many ways.
Being in a playoff spot for most, if not all, of the season is the big one. Goaltending is another. With another win Saturday, Cam Talbot recorded his 30th victory of the season.
Talbot is 30-16-7 in 2016-17 with a 2.35 GAA and a .921 save percentage and the Oilers have allowed the seventh-least number of goals against. He’d won 21 in each of his last two seasons, for the Oilers and New York Rangers respectively.
He started his season with seven wins in his first eight, including a big W at the Heritage Classic against the Jets, days after his wife gave birth to twins. He’s put together four stretches of three or more wins over the course of the campaign.
Edmonton just hasn’t been able to find consistent goaltending in the years since Tommy Salo last reached the 30-win plateau. Dwayne Roloson won 27 and 28 games in two seasons with the Oil while helping the club to the 2006 Stanley Cup Final, but the veteran netminder only spent parts of four seasons with the team and suffered injuries throughout. Devan Dubnyk struggled mightily at times in Edmonton and only reached 20 wins once.
The rest of the cast is a patchwork at best.
As for Salo, the last Oilers goalie to reach 30 wins, he won 27, 36, 30, and 29 games in four full seasons for the Oilers from 1999-2003.
And as reliable as Talbot has been for his team this year, he’s also the most relied-upon goalie in the NHL having played 53 games — four more than Peter Budaj and Martin Jones who sit at 49. Oilers backup Laurent Brossoit has played just three games this season.
Should the Oilers go out and acquire another goalie to give some rest to Talbot prior to the playoffs?
Huberdeau’s back
Speaking of resurgences.
The Florida Panthers are suddenly 7-1 in their last eight and with a win Saturday, they leapfrogged the Bruins and Maple Leafs for third in the Atlantic.
Even their president of hockey operations Dale Tallon said Saturday that they would likely be buyers at the trade deadline.
But it’s been the return of one of their studs that has vaulted them back into the playoff race and in to buy-now mode.
Jonathan Huberdeau, who missed most of this season with an Achilles tendon injury, had a goal in a 3-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings, giving him eight points in his first six games.
And that goal he scored? Whoa.
In his last two seasons with the Panthers, Huberdeau has been good for 54 and 59 points respectively, the kind of production that his club has missed in an admittedly up-and-down year.
The Eastern Conference playoff race is out of control.
Huberdeau might just be the tonic the Panthers need to make something of this crazy campaign.
BONUS THING!!!!!!
Frederik Andersen got a shot on goal! Against? Craig Anderson.
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