Having had no games scheduled between the 22nd and 26th of December, the coaching staff in Montreal decided to give the team a break. No practises or workouts planned until yesterday. The break seemed to have led to a laid back effort from the Canadiens tonight, for most of the team. The team's 3 stars won the game for Montreal, and are as follow's:
Star 3: Tomas Plekanec (2 assists). Plekanec set up 2 of Kostitsyn's goals, and made it real easy for him. Both times he went behind the net and made beautiful passes to the older Kostitsyn. To be honest, I wasn't with Carbo's decision of reuniting A.Kost-Plek-Kovy. I didn't think Plekanec was going to do much but he played very well tonight and deserves third star.
Star 2: Andrei Kostitsyn (3 goals),the hat-trick hero. He scored all three goals in a 3-2 win and honestly, this guy has been due for a good night. At 6 goals in 29 games, we all knew this wasn't the AK-46 we knew from last season. Hopefully he can build on this, and light the lamp more consistently. A first career hat-trick is always a night to remember.
Star 1: Carey Price (32 saves, 2 goals against). Many of you might disagree with Price over Kostitsyn for first star. But Carey was the one who won the game for Montreal. He frustrated Malkin, Crosby, Dupuis, etc. so many times tonight, I lost track of his game-savers. Unbelievable. If it weren't for Price, Montreal loses this game 5-3, no doubt in my mind.
Other good performances include 26 minutes of Komisarek and Markov. Workhorses as a pair, blocking shots and working hard on the PK. Josh Gorges is now 9th in the league in plus/minus. He was a +3 tonight and +17 on the year.
Overall, this was not a very convincing win. Not a team performance but rather, an individual one. A few players stepped up and won it for us, simple as that. This one could've gone either way, and it really shouldn't have been this close. We had a break while Pittsburgh was packed with games. Next up we play back-to-back in Florida and then in Tampa.
Photos courtesy of: TSN, Yahoo! Sports
1 comment:
I'm glad to see AK46 finally have a magical game for us. We passed on Carter, Parise, and Getzlaf to take this guy in the 03' draft so he really needs to breakthrough and become a star in the NHL.
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