VIDEO: faits saillants du match Canadiens c. Vancouver d'hier soir

Ed. here. We count a number of hockey fans amongst our dear readers. Every now and then, after we run a report by our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, one of them writes to know why there are no pictures of Canada's team (the Montréal Canadiens!) in action, or better yet, a video! Here, as an experiment -- let's see how long before YouTube deletes it -- are the highlights of last night's game. Poor Len comments...

Tank youse, Hed. Going into last night's matchup against the Vancouver Canucks, les Glorieux had played 30 games of the shortened 2021 season, with a record of 13-8-9, just barely good enough for the fourth and last playoff spot in the NHL's Canadian/Northern Division.

About that 9 -- single points awarded for losses in overtime or a shootout -- the Habs had a dismal record in those tie-breakers, managin to lose all 6 overtime contests and all 3 shootouts. Moreover, they had lost all 5 games played in their bleu-blanc-et-rouge "reverse retro" sweaters. 

Last night's game was meant to be the last in those, fans like YVT were almost afaid to watch. But, as you will see, things turned out fine. Les Canadiens ont remporté la victoire! 

 

Nick Suzuki, Tomas Tatar, Joel Edmundson and Brendan Gallagher scored in regulation time for the Canadiens, who outshot the Canucks 40-18. Corey Perry and Tomas Tatar scored in the shootout, which went six rounds. After Tatar scored, Carey Price stopped the Canucks’ Nils Höglander on the final shot for the victory.

Les 3 Étoiles de Poor Len: Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Tatar et Phillip Danault. Honourable mentions to Corey Perry -- did you see that shoulder fake on his shootout goal? -- and Carey Price, who was better than the stats suggest.

La Sainte Flannelle are now 2 little points ahead of Vancouver for fourth place, but have 4 games in hand on the Canucks. They are also just 5 points behind Toronto and Edmonton, who are tied for first place. I renew my prediction that Montréal will get into the playoffs, and my wish that they will meet (and beat!) Toronto! Lifetime pct .984.

À la prochaine

National Sports Editor Poor Len Canayen analyses the Montréal-Philadelphia series which ended last night with the Canadien suffering a 3-2 loss.

So dat's it, den. Hard to come back from a deficit of 3 games to 1, but the Habs gave it a pretty good shot, and in the end just had bad puck luck. The Flyers first two goals (in 5 minutes of the first period) both went in off the sticks of Montréal defenders. The third one, which proved to be the winner, hit the goalpost and then caromed in off the back of Carey Price's leg.

You can't blame Price for any of those, or indeed for any of the losses in the series. The problem was not so much bad luck as lack of scoring -- pure and simple. You can't not score for over 130 minutes and expect to win. Your goalie can stand on his head and allow 1.25 goals per game (see my previous post), but if you score 0.0 goals per game, as the Habs did twice, you lose.

Getting back to what Kelly Hrudey called "bad luck"... you can't call it bad luck (entirely) for the goalie when the guys in front of him forget the basics of how to play, or at least one of them. I know, I know. It's hard to think fast when you're out there on the ice in one of the world's fastest games, and it's easy for mere spectators like moi to second-guess, but...

Don Cheery told me more than once this basic rule of defence. It you are between your goalie and the opposing team's shooter, and both you and your goalie are square to the shooter -- directly in line between him and the goalmouth -- what you do not do, as the defender, is stick the blade of your stick out to the side. Let the goalie use his stick to stop the shot. If you try to block the shot with your stick (as opposed to your body), what happens, all too often, is that the puck deflects off the blade of your stick and goes in. That's what happened on the Flyers' first two goals last night. Not bad luck.

For fans of les Glorieux, the playoffs are over. But there's a team called the Canucks, from Vancouver, I believe, who finished off the defending champion St. Louis Blues last night, so it's possible that Lord Stanley's silverware might yet return to the Great No-longer-white North for the first time since the Canadien brought it home in 1993, defeating the Los Angeles Kings.

The winning goal in that series was scored by none other than Kirk Muller, who (because of Claude Julien's heart attack) was coaching the Habs last night. We wish Coach Claude a full recovery and hope he'll be back next season. If that's not possible, the team will be in good hands with Captain Kirk.

And, with some promising prospects coming along, and Nick Suzuki emerging as a potential superstar (he scored both goals last night), I predict with great confidence that 2020-21 will be a much better year for La Sainte Flannelle than this one. And, all things considered, this year wasn't all that bad!

"Dark guy in the middle..." OOPS! Not PC!

Who's "the dark guy in the middle" of this picture from last night's Vancouver Canucks pre-season game?

No! P.K. Subban has not been traded to Vancouver by Montréal, in spite of Poor Len Canayen's pleas last spring. "The dark guy in the middle" is actually P.K.'s youngest brother Jordan, who's trying to crack the Canucks line-up for the coming NHL season.

The caption, including the words "the dark guy in the middle", appeared in the Vancouver Sun. "Concerns" were immediately expressed in the Twitterverse by the usual suspects, the Forces Against Racism, Committee for Political Correctness, etc etc. Apparently it's not acceptable point out that the Subbans -- the middle brother, Malcolm, wears the "B" of the Boston Bruins -- are, in fact, black. [Please don't say "credits to their race". Ed.]

The Sun has since changed the caption.

VIDEO: Incredibly flukey own goal scored on/by Canucks' goalie

Regular readers of WWW know that Walt is an incorrigible hockey fan. Poor Len Canayen is, if anything, even fannier. And both are followers of the Montréal Canadiens, the most successful professional sports team of all time.

However... we get that most of our readers are not so minded. Many of you may even prefer the wimpy diving exhibition which you call "football". So we try to keep the hockey coverage to a minimum. But this video is too good not to share.

Last night both Walt and Poor Len were watching as les Glorieux beat the hometown Vancouver Canucks 4 to 1. Here is how the winning goal was "scored".



We post this not to make fun of Roberto Luongo, one of the best goalies in the NHL. It wasn't his fault, except maybe for thinking that he could clear the puck out to his defenceman without having to worry about what might happen to it. But it wasn't really Hamhuis' fault either. It wasn't anybody's fault! Lars Eller -- we like him a lot -- gets credit for the game-winning goal.