Selasa, 02 Maret 2021

Canadiens Game Day: Carey Price will be in goal vs. Senators - Montreal Gazette

Goalie has struggled this season with a 5-4-3 record, a 3.13 goals-against average and a .888 save percentage.

Author of the article:

Stu Cowan  •  Montreal Gazette

Publishing date:

Mar 02, 2021  •  35 minutes ago  •  7 minute read  •  comment bubble40 Comments
Canadiens goalie Carey Price had allowed five goals in four of his 12 starts this season heading into Tuesday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators at the Bell Centre.
Canadiens goalie Carey Price had allowed five goals in four of his 12 starts this season heading into Tuesday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators at the Bell Centre. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal Gazette

While some Canadiens fans might have lost confidence in goalie Carey Price, interim head coach Dominique Ducharme hasn’t.

That’s why Price will be in goal for the Canadiens when they play the Ottawa Senators Tuesday night at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., TSN2, TSN5, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

Price has struggled this season with a 5-4-3 record, a 3.13 goals-against average and a .888 save percentage. But Ducharme said after Tuesday’s morning skate that he’s confident Price will bounce back after working with goalie coach Stéphane Waite.

“He worked on a lot of things with Stéphane Waite,” Ducharme said. “I’m not going to go into detail about it. It’s very specific work that Stéphane does with our goaltenders. We feel that he’s ready, both physically and mentally. That’s why he’s in goal tonight. We aren’t worried. We know he’ll bounce back.”

In his last start, Price allowed five goals on 29 shots in a 6-3 loss to the Jets last Thursday night in Winnipeg (the sixth goal was into an empty net). It marked the fourth time in his 12 starts this season that Price has allowed five goals and he has given up 14 goals in his last three games while going 0-2-1. Price has a 1-4-1 record in his last six games.

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Going back to last season, Price has allowed at least four goals in nine of his last 17 regular-season games.

Backup goalie Jake Allen has a 4-2-2 record this season with a 2.12 goals-against average and a .929 save percentage. The Canadiens were shut out in both of Allen’s regulation-time losses.

The Canadiens are in fourth place in the North Division with a 9-6-5 record, are winless in their last five games (0-2-3) and have a 2-5-3 record in their last 10. The Canadiens have lost three of their first four games against the Senators this season, including one in overtime and one in a shootout.

Forward Paul Byron said the Canadiens still have a lot of confidence in Price.

“Everyone on this team still believes that he’s the best goaltender in the world,” Byron said. “I think we’re giving up too many good scoring chances when he’s in goal. We can’t allow those kinds of chances. We have to play smart. We have to be careful not to make costly mistakes. We have a lot of confidence in our team and in Carey.”

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The Senators are in last place in the North Division with a 8-15-1 record and did the Canadiens a favour Monday night when they beat the Calgary Flames 5-1 in Ottawa. The fifth-place Flames (10-11-2) are one point behind Montreal with the Canadiens holding three games in hand. The top four teams make the playoffs.

The Senators have a 4-1-0 record in their last five games.

“We took steps in the right direction last game,” Byron said about Saturday night’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Jets in Winnipeg with Allen in goal. “We played well. We were on the attack a lot and generated chances. We have to find a way to put pucks in the net tonight. We must stay disciplined. Good things are going to happen for our team. We know the Senators have a young team that is very good on the power play, so we must stay out of the box to avoid giving them confidence.”

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With the condensed 56-game NHL season, Ducharme was asked if he has thought about going with a merit-based system for his goaltenders and riding the hot hand.

“I have one thing that I think when we think about standings and stuff like that,” the coach said. “It’s not that we don’t look at it, but I’m a firm believer that we’re going to finish where we deserve to finish. It’s much more important to control the things that you can control and we’re confident with that. The way that we’re going to be handling ourselves, kind of the plan that we have, if we’re strong into that plan and that process and that way of thinking we’re going to be where we deserve to be.

“With the goaltenders, I think it’s too early to really go and say it’s going to be that way,” Ducharme added. “I think it’s a feel right now and we’ll take it day-by-day.”

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Joey Daccord will start in goal for the Senators. The 24-year-old has only played in one game this season, stopping all five shots he faced in one period of a 6-3 loss to the Flames on Feb. 27. The only other NHL game Daccord has ever played was during the 2018-19 season when he allowed five goals in a 5-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres.

The Senators selected Daccord in the seventh round (199th overall) of the 2015 NHL Draft.

This Game Day notebook will be updated after Tuesday night’s game.

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The lines

Josh Anderson skated before his teammates took the ice Tuesday morning and will miss his second straight game with a lower-body injury.

Here’s how the forward lines and defence pairings looked at the morning skate:

Tatar – Danault – Gallagher
Drouin – Suzuki – Toffoli
Lehkonen – Kotkaniemi – Armia
Byron – Evans – Perry

Chiarot – Weber
Edmundson – Petry
Kulak – Romanov

Here’s how the two power-play units looked at the morning skate:

Armia
Drouin – Toffoli – Suzuki
Weber

Perry
Kotkaniemi – Gallagher – Tatar
Petry

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Building confidence

Apart from having to replace the injured Anderson, Ducharme will stick with the same lineup for his third game as an NHL head coach while still looking for his first win.

Ducharme has been trying to put in a new system since taking over from Claude Julien last Wednesday and has only had two full practices as the interim head coach — one last Friday in Winnipeg and one Monday in Brossard.

But Ducharme said he liked what he saw in Saturday night’s 2-1 OT loss in Winnipeg when the Canadiens outshot the Jets 41-21 and dominated most of the play five-on-five. The Jets’ goal in regulation time came on a power play. Ducharme said he wants to keep his lines together to help build confidence until the players have a full understanding of the system he wants to play.

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“We want to be so in sync at one point that we can move guys around and it wouldn’t change the way that we play,” the coach said. “The way that we know that the options are going to be there, there and there. And then, after that, once you create that one night then you can move a guy around because he’s got a better night or an off-night or you see a better chemistry you can start maybe trying out things and see different chemistry that maybe could be built.

“We’re working on that core of our game at creating those habits,” Ducharme added. “I don’t want us to react, I want us to act. But acting within those certain rules. So that’s the most important thing right now for me.”

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Problems in OT

The Canadiens have lost three games in overtime and two in shootouts this season and have yet to win a game that went beyond regulation time.

The Senators have won two games in overtime, won another in a shootout and have only lost one in OT.

Joel Armia, who was on the ice along with Phillip Danault and Jeff Petry when the Canadiens lost 2-1 in OT to the Jets last Saturday, was asked Tuesday morning why he thinks his team has struggled in OT.

“I don’t know,” he said.

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Working with Armia

Ducharme said last week that Armia has “world-class qualities” as a player and that he’s working with the 6-foot-3, 212-pound right-winger to make him more consistent.

Armia scored two goals in Ducharme’s first game as head coach when he was given a season-high 16:38 of ice time. Armia added an assist in Ducharme’s second game while logging 16:36 of ice time, his second-highest total of the season. Armia has also been given a spot on the first power-play unit.

“For me, just going out there every single shift, working hard, staying on the forecheck, staying on the puck,” Armia said about what Ducharme expects from him. “Kind of just doing my thing, so that’s it.

“I think he’s been really good help for me the past years (as an assistant coach) and I really like him as a coach,” Armia added.

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As for his role on the power play, Armia said: “Stay net front, kind of screen the goalie. If there’s any puck battles in the corner, I think that’s kind of my job to go in there and try to get those loose pucks back for the team.”

  1. It isn't really fair that Dominique Ducharme was thrust into his position without even a single practice before his first game as head coach, but life — and pro hockey — often isn't fair, Stu Cowan writes.

    Stu Cowan: Pressure is on new Canadiens head coach Dominique Ducharme

  2. Canadiens forward Jonathan Drouin had 41-64-105 totals in 49 games with the Halifax Mooseheads in 2012-13 with Dominique Ducharme as head coach when they went on to win the Memorial Cup.

    Canadiens' Jonathan Drouin has long history with team's new head coach

What’s next?

The Canadiens have a practice scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Bell Sports Complex in Brossard before facing the Winnipeg Jets Thursday night at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM). The Canadiens have a day off scheduled for Friday before facing the Jets again on Saturday night at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SNE, SNW, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

The Canadiens will then fly to Vancouver on Sunday to start a six-game Western Canada road trip.

scowan@postmedia.com

twitter.com/StuCowan1

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2021-03-02 22:07:24Z
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