Casa de Colin

Montreal 1, Buffalo 4
(Johnson; Novotny, Drury, Pominville, Vanek)
Montreal can’t follow up on Niinimaa’s promise and drop to 4-2-2, Buffalo just can’t seem to lose and stays perfect at 9-0-0.

At least we didn’t decide to make this Guaranteed Win night, which would have cost us a lot of money regardless of the promotion.

The first goal was brutal.  I don’t know if Huet misjudged it or if it was just the way it hit him, but geez…  it’s one that you want to have back no matter what the circumstances are.  We made it interesting in the 3rd when we were down 3-0, with Johnson getting a deflected goal for his solid efforts, but we just couldn’t do anything on the PP near the end…  Vanek getting sprung from the box with an empty net breakaway was the icing on the cake.

It was a bad loss (well, our worst of the year by default) and obviously any cockiness we had was wiped away after tonight.  The good news is that Boston’s next on Thursday, and that’s a game we have a great chance of winning.  I’m trying to figure out when Buffalo’s going to lose…  they can certainly tie Toronto’s record by beating the Islanders on Thursday, but on Saturday they’d have to play Atlanta.  Maybe they can tie it, but I can’t see them beating it.

Not going to bother posting the game summaries for the last three games because I’m behind enough as it is, but briefly…

Montreal 5-4 Calgary: It was about time we had a fun game.  Calgary’s one of those teams that’s generally exciting to watch, and we were more than up to the task so it made for two periods of exciting hockey and one period of cautious “protect the lead” hockey, but it all worked out and we won against a struggling team.  Calgary finally did some stuff on the PP here which hurt our nearly flawless PK%, but it all worked out in the end.

Chicago 2-1 Montreal: Worst game of the year so far on two fronts; our play and the game as a whole.  Chicago will do better than last year but I’m not convinced that they’ll make the playoffs.  We played down to their level (or were tired from the Calgary game, take your pick) and the result was this snoozefest.  Aebischer was the only one who could take some credit away from this one; it just wasn’t pretty.

Montreal 8-5 Colorado: The perfect way for Theo to return to Montreal, hm?   I thought for sure that we were done for after that horrid first period but things picked up and we improved as the game went on.  Souray is just incredible so far; I think they made some adjustments to his bionic wrist and they’ve certainly worked out for him.  As for Koivu…  he’s Saku Koivu.  He’s the heart of this team and he’s been just fine, bad eye or no bad eye.  Maybe we ran up the score just a *tad*, but we haven’t scored 8 in a game since a few years ago against Pittsburgh.  We needed this to give us a big confidence boost, and to give Colorado some more worries.  Extremely fun game to watch, but the Calgary game might have been just a tad better play-wise.  This was just more satisfying.

Montreal 2, Ottawa 3 (SO)
(Higgins, Samsonov; Hamel, Kelly)
Ottawa gets a needed win and goes to 2-3-0, Montreal still hasn’t lost in regulation and “falls” to 2-0-2.

Who knew that a threesome of Vermette, McAmmond and Fisher could win a shootout? Go figure.

Montreal came out strong at the start of the first and the Higgins goal was great because we were doing such a good job on the penalty kill and he turned Meszaros inside-out to score. The Ottawa goals were horrid because Huet was left out to dry by his defense on both occasions. Ottawa had the momentum for sure but Samsonov had a great individual effort and scored off that, then we had a good chance with 20 seconds to go in OT but Heatley cleared it. Emery was perfect in the shootout, Huet got fooled twice. That did it.

I’m worried about Dandenault and Rivet since they both left the game with injuries, leaving us with four for OT. If they’re both out for the Calgary game on Tuesday, then we’ll have to call someone up along with Streit. I have no idea who would have the inside track right now… we’ll probably find out tomorrow. Our D itself has to show some more intensity in front of the net because that’s what cost us on both goals.

I really hope the Calgary game doesn’t head into OT or a shootout. 3 in 4 games is crazy enough as it is.

Philadelphia 1, Montreal 3
(Umburger; Ryder, Kovalev, Higgins)
Philly drops to 1-2-1, Montreal finishes a good road trip at 2-0-1.

It’s nice to actually win a game in regulation instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.  This wasn’t easy, however; we had to work extremely hard to contain Philly and come out with the win.

The two keys were the special teams and Aebischer.  The former was perfect killing the eight PP’s, and the latter had another solid game.  Huet starts tonight against Ottawa and I hope he steps up to the challenge; I’d rather have two strong goalies than have one/both stuttering at times.

Not much more to say…  just one of those games where you might not be the best team but you’ll get the win if you work hard and do the job defensively.

Buffalo 5, Montreal 4 (SO)
(Novotny, Pominville, Briere, Afinogenov; Ryder, Higgins, Koivu 2)
Buffalo starts out hot at 2-0-0, and Montreal opens up at 0-0-1.

Toronto 2, Montreal 3 (SO)
(Tucker, Stajan; Souray, Johnson)
Toronto fills every column of their record and goes 1-1-1, Montreal improves to 1-0-1.

I wonder if Montreal’s the first team to start the season with two straight SO appearances.  I can’t be bothered to check last year’s records.

The games weren’t similar at all; we didn’t fall behind at all in the Buffalo game but couldn’t hold out for the win.  Buffalo’s going to be a tough team to play against this season, and they showed it.  We just weren’t ready for them and came less than 15 seconds away from a win but blew it.  The Toronto game was different in the sense that the Leafs really took it to us early on, and we had to claw our way to the tie; of course, once we got there we could have won in regulation but had to rely on luck again.  Not a fun way to start off the season at any rate.

The Koivu/Higgins/Ryder line is clearly the best on the ice right now and Kovalev/Samsonov really need to step things up.  It’s not the most active of weeks; away to Philly on Wednesday and home to Ottawa on Saturday.  I don’t know if Huet will get the start on Wednesday but if he doesn’t then he should start Saturday for sure.  He wasn’t the reason we blew the Buffalo game.