Game 10: Canadiens 3, Bruins 0

Great, great win by the Canadiens, 3-0 over the dirty Bruins.  Whether we're shooting for the playoffs or a high draft pick this season, anytime we can win against Boston is fine by me.  Two first-period goals by Brendan Gallagher and Max Domi (who else?), and a bank-shot empty-netter by Jordie Benn in the third to seal the deal.

Carey Price gets his 290th win as a NHL goalie.  With this win, Carey passes Patrick Roy for sole possession of second place in Canadiens history, behind only Jacques Plante for most career wins.

Coincidentally, Carey was credited with 33 saves for his shutout.

Carey was a little lucky to earn a shutout, which I guess you need to be to play a perfect game.  The Bruins' Ted Donato scored a goal on a rush that was overturned on a challenge by Coach Claude Julien, who argued the Bruins were offside on the play.

Can we agree that if we need a slow-motion High-Definition replay to determine that a play was offside, that it then wasn't, ipso facto?  If it's close enough to good to the linesmen's eyes, doesn't that indicate that no advantage is being gained by the 'offending' team, that essentially the spirit of the rule is being obeyed?  That no one is loafing in the offensive zone waiting for a lazy long pass, that there's no cheating?

Hockey is a wonderful sport, but the NHL is a cesspool of stupidity.  Brad Marchand can lick other players in the face with impunity.  Bodychecking is legal, but not really, and you'll have to defend yourself with your fists if you try to put a shoulder on someone.  Oh, and fighting is not allowed, but then again it kinda is.  Shawn Thornton is a good guy and has a job with an NHL team doing community relations.

The NHL will stop a game mid-course and review a play for minutes on end to determine if a player's skate was a millimetre past the blue line, but when Brad Marchand punches an opponent in the head in his underhanded Marchand way, that we can't review?  Because it wouldn't be, uh, fair?

It's hard to say if the goal reversal would have changed things, maybe the Bruins would have found their game, and the Canadiens would have gripped their sticks tighter, but heck, I'm not going to advocate for those thugs.  They swept the amorphous Canadiens of 2017-18, but they won't be pulling that stunt this year.

Charles Hudon was back in the lineup in favour of the erratic Andrew Shaw, who's been struggling to contribute without running afoul of the refs.  Tonight, it was Joel Armia and Nicolas Deslauriers who got caught behind the play and took bad penalties.  If I had to guess, Nicolas will sit out the next game, but Claude Julien may want to wake up Mr. Armia with a night in the pressbox. Or two.