Game 65: Montreal Canadiens vs. San Jose Sharks<\/p>\n
Start time:\u00a07:00 PM EDT \/ 4:00 PM PDT
In Canada: CityTV, Sportsnet East (English), TVA Sports (French)
In the Sharks region: NBC Sports California
Streaming: ESPN+, Sportsnet+<\/p>\n
It\u2019s rare that a team scores five goals in a game and doesn\u2019t come away with a win. It\u2019s something that has happened just seven times to the Montreal Canadiens since the COVID-shortened season, but two of those losses came last week on the California road trip. They fought back from a 5-2 deficit versus the San Jose Sharks only to give up two more goals and lose 7-5. Two nights later, another three-goal third period had them in a 5-4 lead, but a late winner set up a shootout loss that left them with just one point from those two games.<\/p>\n
Their play has been much different since returning from the West Coast. The two games played versus the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators weren\u2019t barn-burners but more composed efforts in which the Habs paid much more attention to the defensive details. While they were far from perfect efforts with a letup versus the Maple Leafs and a temporary change in their form versus the Senators, each game ended with just one goal surrendered. It was the second time this season they put together back-to-back performances of one goal against or less.<\/p>\n
Feeling better about their defensive play, they get another attempt at slowing down Macklin Celebrini. The previous result stands as the only regulation loss Jakub Dobe\u0161 has been dealt since December 9, and just his sixth in 30 starts this season, so he and the team have their shot at redemption.<\/p>\n
Tale of the Tape<\/p>\n
Canadiens
\n Statistics
\n Sharks<\/p>\n
36-18-10
\n Record
\n 31-26-6<\/p>\n
48.7% (23rd)
\n Expected-goal share
\n 45.3% (30th)<\/p>\n
3.53 (2nd)
\n Goals per game
\n 3.08 (18th)<\/p>\n
3.23 (24th)
\n Goals against per game
\n 3.48 (29th)<\/p>\n
25.1% (4th)
\n PP%
\n 20.3% (17th)<\/p>\n
76.7% (27th)
\n PK%
\n 79.3% (15th)<\/p>\n
0-1-0
\n Head-to-Head Record
\n 1-0-0<\/p>\n
Cole Caufield (37)
\n Most goals
\n Macklin Celebrini (33)<\/p>\n
Lane Hutson (55)
\n Most assists
\n Macklin Celebrini (58)<\/p>\n
Nick Suzuki (75)
\n Most points
\n Macklin Celebrini (91)<\/p>\n
The trade deadline has passed since these two teams last met, but neither side made any major moves. However, the general managers haven\u2019t been idle this season. Kent Hughes made additions earlier in the year to address some injuries among the forward corps by bringing in Phillip Danault and Alexandre Texier, the latter of whom will be a healthy scratch tonight. Mike Grier made a trade with the Vancouver Canucks to acquire one of the hottest goal-scorers from the opening weeks of the NHL season, Kiefer Sherwood, and has since signed him to a contract extension. Both GMs have longer-term visions than merely adding rentals for a post-season run, so negotiations are much more involved, and not the types of major decisions that get agreed upon in an afternoon.<\/p>\n
With no new additions, the Sharks weren\u2019t able to build any momentum from that win over Montreal last Tuesday, dropping their next three games, though they did claim a couple of loser points along the way. In their last game on Thursday, they did both themselves and the Canadiens a favour by beating the Boston Bruins in regulation. Any point is good in the Pacific Division playoff race, and even though they\u2019re 4-4-2 in their last 10 games, that\u2019s still better than what the Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers, and Vegas Golden Knights have managed ahead of them. The Sharks still have a strong chance to make the post-season, and even consecutive wins would make them the envy of most of their divisional opponents.<\/p>\n
San Jose\u2019s win in Boston was just one of several favourable decisions for Montreal as they sat idle on Thursday night. The Detroit Red Wings were beaten in regulation, and the Columbus Blue Jackets earned just one point in overtime. Those are the three teams immediately behind the Canadiens in the standings, with Montreal dealing with the fourth on the list, Ottawa, the night before. Even the Buffalo Sabres lost after giving up a late goal to the Washington Capitals to lose in regulation, so the division lead is just four points ahead, and Montreal has two games in hand.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens have played two of the back-to-backs in their sequence of three in a row with seven of the available eight points added to their season total. They came close to beating San Jose and the Anaheim Ducks (the team they\u2019ll play tomorrow) last week despite some major lapses on defence. Now that they seem to have tightened things up on the back end, they have a chance to win both of these games and end the weekend with not only a playoff spot virtually assured, but perhaps get into position to battle for home-ice advantage in the opening round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Game 65: Montreal Canadiens vs. San Jose Sharks Start time:\u00a07:00 PM EDT \/ 4:00 PM PDTIn Canada: CityTV,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780],"class_list":{"0":"post-502954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-san-jose","11":"tag-san-jose-sharks","12":"tag-sanjose","13":"tag-sanjosesharks","14":"tag-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116227501435897337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}