HabsCast Hockey Blog

The Canadiens will play in Carolina tonight, exactly where they started the season and hopefully the result will be the same. The Canadiens defeated the Hurricanes 3-2 in overtime to spoil their home debut. In the second matchup between the two teams, Carolina avenged their loss and spoiled the Canadiens home debut by a score of 3-1. The Canadiens, who have won their last two games, will try to keep the streak alive against Erik Cole and company.

Following tonight’s game, the Canadiens will head into Pittsburgh to face Sidney Crosby and company. The Penguins just lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night by a score of 5-2 and will be looking to rebound against the Habs. The Penguins are also off to a mediocre start going 5-4. This will be their second meeting of the season. The Canadiens won the first meeting between the teams by a score of 3-2.

The Canadiens arguably played their best hockey of the season on Monday night when they vanquished the Boston Bruins 6-1, which was by far their most commanding win yet. Everything seemed to be clicking for a team who has struggled to score 5on5 since the season’s start. They scored 4 of their 6 goals even strength and each line made their own contribution on the score sheet. The Canadiens hopefully learned a valuable lesson, which is that they can’t rely on their first two lines if they want to win. Moreover, Cristobal Huet played a magnificent game on Monday night, earning him two straight starts. It was originally believed that Carbonneau would play Huet against the Hurricanes and Price against the Penguins but Huet’s play on Monday earned him the two starts this weekend.

Carbonneau will also be keeping the lines intact for the third straight game, leaving Kostitsyn on the sidelines yet again. I’m taking it that Carbo’s philosophy is ‘why fix it if it isn’t broken?’ Here are the lines for tonight’s game against the Hurricanes and possibly against the Penguins:

Forwards
Higgins - Koivu - Ryder
Latendresse - Plekanec- Kovalev
Grabovski - Smolinski - Dandenault
Begin - Chipchura - Kostopoulos

Defence
Markov - Komisarek
Hamrlik - Brisebois
Bouillon - Streit

Goaltender
Huet

Prediction: Canadiens 4, Hurricanes 3 / Canadiens 3, Penguins 5

This will be the first time this season that the Canadiens will be playing back-to-back games and it will challenge their endurance and energy. It will be interesting to see how the Canadiens will play. They have been given a long rest since they haven’t played in 4 days and should be ready to play two games in 24 hours. Every player played the way they were supposed to on Monday and the momentum should carry into tonight’s game. The result of tonight’s game will dictate the result in tomorrow night’s game against the Penguins so it is important that the Canadiens come out with a win. If the Canadiens lose tonight, it should be interesting to see what Carbonneau will do, whether he’ll keep the lines or not. The Canadiens are facing some tough opponents this weekend, which could spell trouble, however, they have already beaten these teams this season and that should be enough confidence for them to do it again.

Digg - StumbleUpon - Reddit - Del.icio.us - Technorati - Email - Etc...

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!