Tuesday 17 December 2019

Game 34: Canadiens 3, Canucks 1

The Canadiens now do the ritual Western Canadian road trip, a time of the season when they finally play at a reasonable hour.



The Canucks are wearing their cool thirty-third third jersey.  They should stick with this one, or their original uni, all the others really blow.  Get rid of that cartoon whale/product placement.


The Canucks opened the scoring on a powerplay, a wicked shot from Adam Gaudette.  Tomas Tatar again was the culprit in the offensive zone, tripping Jake Virtanen, but it's debatable how merited that penalty was.  Tomas had poke-checked away the puck from the clumsy Canuck, and when on his follow-through his stick ended up near his shinpads, the big galoot went down pretty easily.  Hmmf...

Canadiens 0, Canucks 1 at the first intermission.

The Canadiens are buzzing around the Canucks' zone in the second, but it's reminiscent of the Tomas Plekanec and David Desharnais years, when the top centres/lines were not really offensive threats, too small and not talented enough to be difference makers.  So like the Detroit game, we see a lot of shots from outside, attempted deflections, lots of heat but very little light.

I remember when I thought that Alex Galchenyuk and Sebastian Collberg and Tim Bozon were going to fix all that, give us a lethal powerplay.  Now I'm reduce to fantasizing about Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Cole Caulfield.

For now, we'll have to rely on an ice-cold Max Domi feeding a cement-handed Nick Cousins for our offence, which he does, a nifty little pass to tie up the game.

Halfway through the period, a strange sequence, where Carey Price makes a great save but gives up a big fat popup of a rebound, on which Tanner Pearson capitalizes.  Carey had no idea where the puck was, and it could have deflated the team, save for the fact that the play was reversed on an offside review, on which said reviews the Canadiens video coaches are killing it this year.  

All that remained was killing off another penalty for a slash by Nick Cousins on Josh Leivo, which had occasioned a delayed penalty call on the eventually disallowed goal, and Marc Denis posed the reasonable question, if the goal was annulled by the offside, shouldn't the slash be as well?  Since the whistle should have blown well before it happened?  Pierre LeBrun of TSN later explained that this is the rule, that penalties aren't expunged by a call that winds back the clock.

Ryan Poehling drew some praise from Pierre Houde for a sequence with Nate Thompson, good board work and puck protection by him, which led to a scoring chance in close.  It also led to the Canucks scrambling, and the next shift with Danault, Armia and Lehkonen playing keepaway with the puck, and Armia eventually potting the goal.  The Canucks challenged the goal because of goalie interference, and the refs, impenetrably, bought it and overturned the goal, even though Oscar Fantenberg clearly crosschecked Artturi into his own goalie.  
Up is down and black is white and impeaching Donald Trump is an attack on democracy and Artturi Lehkonen interfered with Jakob Markstrom on that disallowed goal.  We live in a post-truth world.

I switched over to TSN for the intermission, because Mario Tremblay on RDS, I'm sorry I can't.  Pierre LeBrun was as flabbergasted with the decision as literally everyone else on Earth is.

Canadiens 1, Canucks 1 after two periods.

But maybe the refs have some modesty.  They had to call two penalties against the Canucks, early in the third, couldn't very well let them go, and Tomas Tatar and Shea Weber cashed them in.

At this point we see lots of empty seats on our TV picture, that burgundy lower bowl upholstery they use at that barn, but many more are occupied by fans in bleu-blanc-rouge.  I texted and asked my friend in attendance at the rink how quiet it got, but he didn't reply, meaning he's drunk, obviously.  Drunk, and happy.

The Canucks mounted a furious comeback attempt, pulling their goalie with three minutes to go and setting up for long stretches in the Canadiens' end, but Carey stayed strong.

Canadiens 3, Canucks 1, goodnight my friends.

Les faits saillants de RDS:



For local colour, let's also see what John Shorthouse and John Garrett had to say about this game.

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1 comment:

  1. Ian18 December 2019 at 08:15

    Really enjoy your posts. Have you bookmarked.

    Cannot believe the Armia goal was overturned. I know I am biased but it seemed pretty clear to me that Lehky was being pushed from behind by the Vancouver D-man the whole time.

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