Tighter defense, opportunistic attack, productive massive attack, the Canadian ticked quite a few boxes. Slowly, but surely, he was heading towards a well-crafted victory against Patrick Roy’s Islanders. Then, with just over eight minutes remaining, everything almost changed.
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The reason? A stupid punishment from Brendan Gallagher received following a dangerous gesture. Hitting Adam Pelech with an elbow to the head, the veteran was ejected from the match. The kind of gesture that will undoubtedly earn him a hearing before the NHL disciplinary committee.
While waiting to know what fate the league has in store for their teammate, the Canadian players had to make do with one man less for five minutes. The Islanders took advantage of the opportunity to turn a 1-3 deficit into a tied 3-3 game.
Monahan increases his value
Sean Monahan showed opportunism by scoring the winning goal. Monahan thus concluded a three-point evening.
As colleague Dave Lévesque, who was to my left on the bridge, pointed out, each point Monahan amasses increases his value on the transaction market.
The best part is that in Monahan’s case, it’s not just about points. On Thursday, he was a constant threat near Semyon Varlamov. In addition to taking five shots on goal, he played the role of a real general in the slot.
It was a little more difficult in the faceoff circle, but it’s an exception to his habits.
Eight massive attacks
Gallagher isn’t the only red-clad skater to preach indiscipline. The Habs offered six power plays to Roy’s team. Of the lot, Arber Xhekaj received two questionable punishments.
He will have to be careful, because this is one of the criticisms made against him when he was sold to the Laval Rocket in December.
Moreover, if it had not been for these multiple numerical inferiorities, we would have congratulated the defensive work of Montrealers. The Islanders fired a total of 47 shots on goal. Sixteen of them were killed while playing with a man advantage.
Damaged in Boston, allowing eight goals on 30 shots, Montembeault recovered very well.
A good start
Since the start of the campaign, the Canadian has often been criticized for experiencing rather dull first periods.
“The start of a match is always important, but recently, it’s not a problem,” said the Canadian head coach in the morning. The first four or five minutes are good. It’s afterwards that it hurts us.”
Thursday, against the Islanders, the Habs players made sure not to experience a drop in performance. Taking advantage of the slightest opportunity to score in the first period, they also showed opportunism, which had not happened for a long time.
Had King Charles, Pope Francis or Taylor Swift been behind the Islanders bench, the result would have been the same. The Canadian showed up at the Bell Center with the intention of not being impressed.
Fire in the skates
Roy hammered home so much to his players that they needed to focus on the team and not on the return of their new head coach to Montreal that he may have turned them off.
Because, if it was from the visitors that we expected a frenzied start to the match, it was rather the troops of Martin St-Louis who had the fire under their skates.
Roy even had to call a timeout after the Habs took a 3-0 lead.