Dec 10 Montreal Unable to Match Tampa Bay's Lightning and Lose 3-1

The Tampa Bay lightning are presently in last place. With the exception of Martin St Louis, Vincent Lecavalier as well as dinosaurs Olaf Kolzig and Mark Recchi on the roster, the rest of the team is a virtual "who's that?" of the NHL. Montreal, full of speed, promise and skill, presently in 4th place in the east, was unable to get the 2 points against a team whose flight was delayed the night before and didn't get into town until noon today. What went wrong?

The Canadiens' only real mistakes tonight were giving up the lead and never being able to muster a comeback. After they went up 1-0 on a goal by Patrice Brisebois off another Kovalev feed (at least he's getting assists, folks). This goal was a powerplay goal, but don't get too excited, the good news stops here.

Before the 1st period was over, the Habs were down 2-1 with goals coming from, who else but St Louis and Lecavalier with Halak most certainly wanting to have another crack at St Louis' shot from the blue line. The game was then put to bed when in an ensuing powerplay, the Canadiens allowed St louis to stroll in alone on Halak and roof a shot past Halak's glove for a shorthanded goal. It seemed like all Tampa Bay shooters were going glove side on Jaroslav..

With the exception of the 1st period, the Canadiens out shot the Lightning all game and Olaf Kolzig played like he was 28, not 38, making some great saves to keep his team ahead. Kolzig would go on to be named the game's 2nd star. I don't think I need to tell you who the other 2 were?

Halak, on the other hand, although he played a superb game Tuesday night against Calgary, looked a bit unsure of himself and tentative at best when handling the puck, being caught out of position on more than one occasion and most likely, on a good night, would be able to have stopped  at least 2 of Tampa's goals. Halak, however was not the real reason the Canadiens lost this game.

Notwithstanding Tampa's Quebec connection having their way with the Habs...again, The Montreal Canadiens had to

a) play the lightning as if they were the leagues first place team and not the last. They didn't.

b) score more than one goal on a defensive corps made up fo players like Eminger, Heward, Krajicek and Lundin. They didn't.

c) score on the powerplay. Well they did, scoring their only goal on the man-advantage, but when they were only down by one and when a goal could have changed the momentum while they were down by 2, the Habs were unable to take advantage of the other 4 opportunities they were given. But this is not a problem specific to tonight's game and I'll assume the coaches are already aware, but some results in the near future would be appreciated.

And last but not least, Montreal has to stop assuming that they are going to have an easy win before they even step on the ice. Every time they do, they end up with the result they got tonight. If they can get that mental aspect of their game under wraps, maybe they can start accumulating a string of wins higher than 3 in a row.

And the news doesn't get much better for the Habs. You will notice that Guillaume Latendresse, Sergei Kostitsyn and Ryan O'Byrne were back in the line-up (or maybe you didn't because they were basically all non factors) but they were. This is due to the injuries recently incurred by Matthieu Dandenault and Christopher Higgins. The only player sitting out as a healthy scratch was Georges Laraque. Well, big George, better lace 'em up because if Saku Koivu's "lower body injury" he suffered in the 3rd period is serious, we will have no more spare parts to watch from above... Hamilton, are you listening?

photo from habsinsideout.com

Tags: hockey \ Martin St Louis \ Montreal Canadiens \ NHL \ Olaf Kolzig \ Tampa Bay Lightning \ Vincent Lecavalier