The Canadiens stumble at home, losing in a decisive manner to the Dallas Stars 4-1.
--This is the second decisive loss at home this season, the other coming against the Kings, another big strong team. It's still early in the season, and teams are finding their legs and their identity, and it's a small sample size, but it appears as if the bigger physical teams will be the ones that give our fleet-footed group the most trouble. This should exacerbate as the season progresses and the referees forget their marching orders and revert to form, stop calling games as strictly as they do now and 'let boys be boys', to please the Don Cherrys who infest the game.
--I missed the first period, but watched the second on RDS with Pierre Houde and Marc Denis. At the start of the third, I thought I'd switch over to TSN, thinking I might like a dose of Gord Miller and Ray Ferraro if they happened to be on, but instead the game was called by Bryan Mudryk and Dave Poulin. Nope nope nope, I headed back to RDS. Nothing against Messrs. Mudryk and Poulin, they're fine gentlemen, but why make do with good enough when the superb RDS team is on the other channel? It's really no contest.
--Generally, the broadcast decisions made by the NHL have been horrid, and there might be a realization of that, if we're to believe this column by Dave Pagnotta. He outlines something we've discussed on here before, how the NHL might get together with its broadcast partners Sportsnet in Canada and NBC in the U.S., and spin off a chunk of games to other partners like TSN/RDS, and ESPN in the States.
This would be welcome by all hockey fans, with more hockey on more channels being an obvious benefit, and with competition forcing a better quality of broadcasts. Sportsnet is still clownish frequently, with spelling and grammatical errors in their graphics, with Nick Kypreos and Don Cherry dumbing down the content. Were they to reduce their outlay by selling off a chunk of games to TSN, they might be able to hire a couple more people to staff their studio, instead of apparently relying on unpaid high-school interns to do the amateurish work they offer now. Maybe we won't see directing mistakes where the feed is switched to a camera being wheeled from one position to another, or trained on the coach picking his nose.
--The Canadiens got more shots and more hits than the Stars, but the second period decided the game, with the Stars scoring twice, with a barrage of 14 shots directed at Carey Price.
Brendan Gallagher made the game 2-1 early in the third, but the Canadiens kept getting penalties during the game, hampering their momentum. The Stars scored a short-handed goal and added an empty-netter.
--Pierre McGuire of NBC likes to say that hockey should be called 'goalie', so important is the position. In this game, Carey Price stopped 18 of 21 shots. Not bad, but there weren't any standout saves that 'kept the Canadiens in the game'. Meanwhile, Ben Bishop, that big jerk, stopped 34 of 35 shots.
It's a game of lucky bounces, a game of inches, and in this instance, Ben Bishop gave his team a chance to win, by making one or two more saves than Carey could.
--It's hard to find heroes in a clear loss like this, and you don't want to focus on one game, but we saw none of the Mike Reilly 'fluidity' (as Marc Denis called it), the Thomas Tatar industry, the Jonathan Drouin artistry that we've seen previously this season. I don't want to call it a reversion to the mean, but the Canadiens have been exceeding expectations, and if these guys don't play the passionate, inspired game they have so far early this season, they'll truly be overmatched by the more talented teams they run into, like the Caps on Thursday and the Lightning on Saturday.
--Jonathan Drouin was fiery in the right manner in the last five or six games, playing with hustle, competing, driving the play. Tonight, he got sidetracked, battled with other players away from the play, little slashing and jawing festivals. He pouted and yelled at the referees for their decision-making. He wasn't focused.
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