Canadian 5 — Panthers 9 | Is there a number one keeper in the room?

(Sunrise) With 12 minutes and 27 seconds left in the second period, Jake Allen rushed out of his net to return to the hallway of the locker room, and come back to sit on the stool of the reserve with a red cap on his head .

Thus, Jake Allen was going to be replaced by Samuel Montembeault, who had just been replaced by Jake Allen. A goalkeeper who is replaced, it happens, but a goalkeeper who replaces another goalkeeper who had replaced him during the previous period, it is rarer.

What is less rare is a defeat for the Canadian, and it was spectacular: 9-5 against the Florida Panthers, who must have wondered if they were facing a National League club.

“We looked like a street hockey club, and they looked like a club fighting for a playoff spot… that’s pretty unacceptable from us,” Nick Suzuki summed up at the end. evening, with a lot of apropos.

It wasn’t a 1980s-themed party at the FLA Live arena, but the final score evoked fond memories of that sweet era, when Greg Millen and John Garrett were all the rage along with shoulder pads and Bananarama.

The score of course indicates that it was not a good evening for the goalkeepers. Not for Sergei Bobrovsky, and even less for Montembeault and Allen. Incidentally, the two men were not made available by the club’s management during the late evening question period.

“It was a bad game on our part, we didn’t help them and we let them down,” explained Rem Pitlick. We can’t play like that in front of them. »

There are many cases that we will discover during the 13 games that remain in this interminable season, and among these, we will discover, if it has not already been done, that there is no real number one keeper in this organization.

This slight detail is important, because the Canadiens aspire to something, not now or tomorrow, but maybe one day, and in this league, unless you have a packed club like the Avalanche one year, you don’t win with two number two goalies.

The previous administration never thought of finding a successor to Carey Price, and it will have to think about it one day.

In the meantime, there will be evenings like this at Sunrise.

“It was a weird game,” defender David Savard said after the game. It went back and forth in the first period. It wasn’t very pleasant… The whole evening was weird, the first period was really weird. It was just a disappointing game.

The time for hearings therefore continues. The time for evaluations also continues, and one wonders what general manager Kent Hughes thinks of all this, and above all, what he thinks of the situation in net, which cannot be ignored.

We recall that barely a year ago, the DG had hinted that in his eyes, there is no goalkeeper of the caliber of a number one in his organization. This observation has probably not changed in 2023.

In details

A first for a long time

The Canadian started the match as he wanted: by giving the Panthers confidence, then hoping to turn this excess of confidence against them and surprise them. The second end didn’t come, however, and the Panthers were able to build confidence with a grand total of 7 goals in the first period. Is that rare, 7 goals in the first period? In effect. In fact, the Canadiens have allowed 7 goals in the first period only two other times in their history, in 1938 against the Montreal Maroons, and also in 1985 against the Hartford Whalers. The Canadian had ended up losing that game 11-6 at Hartford, meaning the Whalers song, the classic Brass Bonanza, was heard 11 times that night, which is perhaps more fabulous than the score. himself.

Bobrovsky: not really better

Of course, the two Canadiens goaltenders had a rather difficult evening Thursday night at Sunrise, but in goal for the Panthers, Sergei Bobrovsky didn’t exactly look like Martin Brodeur. In fact, the Russian goalkeeper also seemed very shaky, to the point of giving up 3 goals on the Canadian’s first 3 shots. Fans here gave him sarcastic applause when he finally made a save on Montreal’s fourth shot. Despite this erratic performance, Bobrovsky was not taken out of the game by coach Paul Maurice. For what ? Probably because the Panthers reserve on Thursday night was Mack Guzda, a 22-year-old goalkeeper from Tennessee, never drafted. Guzda has played 25 games in the American League this season. His NHL baptism will have to wait until another time…

Not like December…

One of the proudest traditions for the good people of Quebec at the holiday season is to come see the Canadiens at Sunrise for a fraction of the price, invade the beaches by playing Embarque ma belle very loudly on a portable speaker, and then blubber against the Bye bye on the return flight. Of course March is not December, but still, Quebec seemed to have left the Sunrise/Fort Lauderdale area on this hot Thursday evening, since there were several empty benches (crowd of 17,372 spectators, according to the game sheet), and very few tricolor jerseys. But the final score of the match suggests that Quebec did well to stay at home.