With "regular" players dropping like flies -- Josh Anderson and Christian Dvorak went to the infirmary this week -- Laurent Dauphin (C) and Jesse Ylönen (RW) were called up from the Laval Rocket, and Kale Clague (D) was claimed on waivers from... well, it doesn't matter. Suffice it to say that you never heard of him or the other two before, and likely won't hear much about them in the future.
Clague has been with the alleged defensive corps for two games and is -1. Unfortunately that one was a goal he put right on the stick of Tampa Bay's Pat Maroon in Tuesdsay night's 3-2 loss.
Dauphin has been good at the faceoff dot, winning 70% of the draws he's taken. Unfortunately he doesn't play defence so well, and is -3 for two games. Ylönen, playing for the first time in last night's 2-0 loss to Chicago, is only -1. He had one shot, otherwise 000 across the score sheet.
That brings us to Jake. Walt tells me that 60 or 70 years ago, before the CBC became the propaganda arm of Canada's Liberal party, they used to have some pretty good radio [??? What's that? Ed.] dramas, among them a series called Jake and the Kid. It was a collection of short stories by Canadian author W.O. Mitchell. "The Kid" is a boy growing up on a farm in fictional Crocus SK, in the 1940s-1950s. "Jake" is the hired hand who helps the Kid's mother run the farm, and keeps the Kid abreast of events in the greater world and in Crocus.
But that's not the "Jake" we're talking about here. Walt says the saga of the Formerly-glorious Canadiens should be called "Jake and the kids", because what we've got now is Jake Allen, the hired hand acquired last season to back up Carey Price, trying to keep the Habs in the game, without much support from the motley crew of youngsters and "expendables" trying to fill the skates of a long list of sick, injured and just-plain-tired veterans.
I feel bad for Jake Allen. He does the best he can, and has played nearly 1200 minutes, more than any other goalie in the NHL. His stats aren't as bad as they appear if you just look at the 5-13-2 win/loss record. He has appeared in 21 of the Habs' games, and has a GAA of 2.96 with a save percentage of .907.
Those numbers are the more remarkable since, thanks to the woeful defence, Allen often faces 40 or more shors per game, compared with a "normal" 30-35. And he is often the victim of egregious errors by the players in front of him. On Tuesday it was Clague's giveaway. Last night it was Alexandre Romanov who made nifty pass right to a Blackhawk in the middle of the slot.
I said it before, and I'll say it again. This year's edition of the Canadiens needs to score 4 goals a game, since they're going to allow 3, in spite of the best efforts of Jake Allen. Sadly, too many of the Habs' games have been one-goal games. By that, I mean they won or lost by one goal, but that they scored just one only goal. Last night, against the Chicago Blackhawks, they didn't score any. Final score: 2-0.
Footnote: The Chicago goalie who posted the shutout last night was none other than Marc-André Fleury, a native of Sorel QC. For most of his NHL career, Fleury starred with the Pittsburgh Penguins. More recently he had a backup role with the Las Vegas Golden Knights, and this season joined the Chihawks as a no. 3 goalie.
Last night's win was Fleury's 500th career victory. He is only the third goaltender in NHL history to reach the lofty plateau of 500 wins. Ahead of him are Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy, both of whom are also gars de chez nous. There's a lesson there somewhere.
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