Like I wrote yesterday in my article, I thought the habs were going to bounce back against the Canucks with a strong defensive performance, even if I wasn't sure it was going to be enough to win. But obviously it was.
The game started with a beautiful pass from Poouliot to Desharnais that showed his speed to beat out the defencemen to get a breakaway and score a nice five hole goal on Luongo. Alot of so called experts had said Desharnais didn't have the speed to play in NHL but that's not what I am seeing. By getting that important first goal of the game that heleped the canadiens stick to their defensive system and not play catch up hockey, Desharnais gets rewarded with 5:03 minutes of ice time. I can understand Coach Martin limiting his ice time on the road, because he is scared of the match ups the home team might put up against him, but at least he should make him play on the powerplay. And people will say his limited ice time was because the coach wanted to protect the lead, if that is so then why was Gomez on the ice for 18:00 minutes when he is one of the worst in the plus-minus category with a minus 18.
In my humble opinion Gomez doesn't fit the habs system cause he slows down the game by carrying the puck from behind the net to the offensive zone and then looses the puck or gets a weak shot off to the net. The habs do well when the D-men make a quick first pass and the habs utilize their speed to counter attack. Plus Gomez can't score a goal if his life depended on it, a perfect example is on a canadiens powerplay with a wide open net he misses completly over the net.
Another negative fact would be that stupid penalty that Pouliot took in last 2 minutes of second period when he cross checked Ballard behind the net when Ballard didn't even have the puck. If the Canadiens are going to make a big push in the last stretch into the playoffs the team is going to have to be disciplined. Because with Georges out, they want to keep Gill's energy for the playoffs, because in last night's game we saw the importance of Gill. In the 6 powerplays the canucks had he was on the ice for 5 of them, and in those 5 they only allowed one goal. Gill did a tremendous job in front of the net against Kessler. In the other powerplay the canucks scored cause nobody was able to move Kessler out of Price's face. And what can I say about that icing call Gill got in the last minute of the game, that play kept the Canucks from pulling their goalie and forced the canucks back in their zone for a faceoff.
I also like what I saw from the Eller line with Kostitsyn and Moen. I now can say that Eller needs to be developed as a center with the way he plays when he is in that position. That goal Kostitsyn scored was a result from Eller's hard work and AK46's ability to take a hit and go to the net. With a give and go with Eller, he scored a nice goal in between Luongo's pads. See what happens when you don't play with Gomez, good stuff happen, and Kostitsyn can use his size and shot to score some goals. I just hope Gomez doesn't make Pacioretty lose his confidence. And instead that Pacioretty helps Gomez start showing he can play like he played in the playoffs last year.
Since last year's playoffs the habs have shown thay can beat the top teams in the league if they stick to the game plan and limit the scoring chances, that way they make life easy on Price, and he can win us alot of games that way.
That being said we all wait the day Gauthier goes and get a Big defenceman or a big forward to help the habs with his physicality in the playoffs. The general manager has 5 days to make a move, the clock is ticking and i will wait to see if he does anything before I criticize him. So let's wait and see what happens!
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