HabsCast Hockey Blog

After Tuesday night’s upsetting loss to the Florida Panthers (second in a row), the Montreal Canadiens will look to upset the heavily favored Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Place tonight. Even though Cristobal Huet played a solid game, Guy Carbonneau has called upon rookie netminder Carey Price to carry the load against the Senators. Moreover, Guy Carbonneau expressed his displeasure to the comments that Alex Kovalev made following Saturday night’s game, however, he dismissed there being any turmoil between the two. All things put aside, the Canadiens will have to play their best hockey if they want to come out of this game in one piece.

Carey Price will be playing in just his second NHL game tonight and it will be against yet another offensive power house. It’s interesting to see how Carbonneau is tossing Price into a game against one of the best teams in the league. Argue with me if you’d like, but it seems that Carbonneau is trying hard to prove a point to GM Bob Gainey that it wasn’t the best move to keep Price in the NHL. I’m not going to lie, I’m nervous for the kid going into this game, but if he played the way he did against the Penguins, the Canadiens will have a good chance of winning this game.

If you look at the Canadiens’ last two games, you’ll see that they’ve only managed to score 2 goals, hence, in terms of winning, if the Canadiens want to win this game they will have to find the net and more than once. Thankfully for the Habs, they are playing against a goalie that hasn’t fared too well against them of late. Last year, in the one game that Gerber played against the Canadiens he allowed 5 goals and let’s not talk about his 2006 playoff performance because we all know what happened. However, Gerber has been hot of late and will have to keep it up if he doesn’t want to lose the job to Ray Emery, who has just been cleared to play. The Canadiens will need to score early and often tonight and Guy Carbonneau is trying to achieve this by altering his lines…again.

Here’s what they’ll look like tonight:

Forwards
Higgins – Koivu – Ryder
Kostitsyn – Grabovski – Kovalev
Latendresse – Plekanec – Kostopolous
Begin – Smolinski – Dandenault

Defense
Markov – Komisarek
Brisebois – Hamrlik
Bouillon – Streit

Goalie
Price

Guy Carbonneau is going with the lines he had at the beginning of the season, when the Canadiens played the Carolina Hurricanes. Even though I think Chipchura deserves to be in the lineup over Latendresse or Begin, the Canadiens will need all the size they can get if they want to be successful in tonight’s game. I like the idea of Kostitsyn and Grabovski going back on the second line with Kovalev. I liked the way they played in the first two games and thought it was a big mistake separating them. Hopefully, Latendresse will step up his game a notch and prove to Carbonneau that he deserves to be on this team. The defense will also need to play tighter and try to reduce the amount of penalties they take.

Prediction: Ottawa 3, Montreal 2 OT

Overall, the key to this game lies in the offense of the Canadiens. The Canadiens will not win this game if they score just one or two goals. They need to be consistent and cannot rely on Carey Price to win them this game. This is also a good chance for Carey Price to prove his top critics that he does belong in the NHL, one of them being his own coach, Guy Carbonneau.

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