Let’s get all the excuses out of the way right off the hop.
The Montreal Canadiens had an empty-the-tank kind of effort at altitude in Denver in a 2-0 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday before arriving in the wee hours of Thursday morning in Arizona. They had to play a Coyotes team that had picked up seven of eight points in their last four games and points in 11 of their last 16. A team playing far better than it had in putting together the NHL’s worst record through the first half of the season.
It was fairly obvious this game wouldn’t be a cinch for the Canadiens. Nothing has been for them in this terrible season. But the degree to which they struggled en route to going down 3-0 to the Coyotes was truly astounding.
Montreal’s late-game charge, out-shooting Arizona handily and scoring two goals before surrendering two more, led them to a 5-2 loss and made them the only team to lose twice to the Coyotes this season.
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Our takeaways:
Carey Price’s perfect record vs. Coyotes undone by teammates
The Canadiens’ goaltender had gone 9-0-0 against Arizona/Phoenix over his career, posting a minuscule goals-against average of 1.76 and a sparkling save percentage of .938.
When Price’s teammates allowed a half-breakaway to Nick Cousins on the first shift of the game, he bailed them out with his glove. He stopped four more odd-man rushes in the first seven minutes of action. He faced a total of nine shots in the frame and eight of them were top quality scoring chances.
But Price couldn’t stop Clayton Keller’s 17th goal of the season — a seeing-eye shot through him and Coyotes forward Tobias Rieder, who was allowed to post up in the crease uncontested.
Price was visibly furious after that power-play goal was scored at the 13:56 mark of the first period, shooting the puck out of his net about as fast as it went in. No one would’ve blamed him for unloading on his teammates about it — and everything else they did in the opening 20 minutes — in the dressing room during intermission.
If Price — or anyone else — did in fact step up and say something about stopping the bleeding, it fell on deaf ears. It was just 57 seconds into the second period when Brandon Perlini beat Price with a change-up. He was left all by himself in the slot, with no Canadiens anywhere in sight on the play.
And then Perlini got a breakaway 19 second later and made it 3-0.
The Canadiens held Arizona to just five shots on net over the next 30 minutes of the game. It was their version of “I’m sorry,” to Price. It just wasn’t enough.
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Road woes? More like road kill…
This was Montreal’s 19th road loss in 27 games. That makes the Canadiens the worst road team in the NHL.
If you care to know how bad they’ve been of late away from the Bell Centre, Thursday’s loss was their 10th in their last 11 road games. They’ve been shut out three times over that stretch, and they have only managed 10 goals total in those 10 losses.
The Canadiens are now packing up in Arizona and heading for Las Vegas, where—as of the time of this writing—the Golden Knights have lost just four times in regulation and twice in extra time. They’ll have their rookie dinner in Sin City ahead of what will be the first of 14 games remaining on their road schedule this season.
Good luck with all of that!
If things remain as they’ve been for the Canadiens away from home, they will only increase their draft lottery odds from here to the end of the season. They’re currently in 26th place, only one point up on the Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks (both in action as of the time of this writing) and only two points up on the Ottawa Senators, who rank 29th in the league.
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What lineup changes for Canadiens revealed
Canadiens coach Claude Julien was asked before the game why he was subbing out a sparkplug like Nicolas Deslauriers. He elected to insert Daniel Carr isntead and brought in Jacob De La Rose for Byron Froese, who has also been playing strong hockey of late.
“We have a week and a half here before the trade deadline to make evaluations on all of our personnel before making decisions,” said Julien.
De La Rose set up Carr for Montreal’s second goal, and both players showed the type of effort—at least in the second half of the game—that should make for a good competition at the bottom end of Montreal’s lineup.
We thought Canadiens defenceman Jakub Jerabek might dress after sitting out four straight games (three of them losses. Maybe the reason he didn’t is because Julien already knows what to expect of him and wanted to help general manager Marc Bergevin showcase some of the team’s other defencemen ahead of the trade deadline.
If that was in fact the case, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for Montreal if scouts scheduled to be at the game decided not to show up for it.
