The Rangers are having a very disappointing season.
And the Montreal Canadiens were corrected the day before by the Toronto Maple Leafs in a 7-3 defeat.
If we combine all this with the extremely tight ranking in the Atlantic division, we could therefore expect quite a match between the two teams on Sunday evening.
Before the match, the CH recalled Owen Beck, who took Michael Pezzetta’s place in the lineup, he who has only been allowed a few short appearances per match for several weeks.
Following the 7-3 defeat, and the fact that it was a second match in 24 hours, Jakub Dobes got a second start in 72 hours.
Here is the formation that the Habs presented for the match:
CH started the match relatively slowly, but still had the upper hand over the Rangers in terms of shots (9-5). On the other hand, New York was luckier and, above all, more opportunistic.
First, Alexis Lafrenière opened the scoring by taking advantage of a capricious jump.
Interestingly, the fans at the Bell Center are still very resentful towards Chris Kreider and do not hesitate to boo him when he has the puck.
A few minutes after Lafrenière’s goal, Brendan Gallagher brought everyone back to square one with a nice deflection.
#11 skillfully deflected Christian Dvorak’s shot to score his 11th goal of the season.
Josh Anderson also collected an assist on this goal.
However, it only took 46 seconds for the Rangers to regain the lead in the game.
Will Cuylle scored his 12th goal of the campaign, unassisted.
This goal did not please the Tricolore who decided to transform into Big Bad Habs.
There was a big brawl near the benches of both teams.
What caught the attention was Josh Anderson who did not spare Braden Schneider.
The latter was cut at the lip in the sequence.
It was therefore with a score of 2-1 in favor of the Rangers that the two teams returned to the locker room after the first period.
At the start of the second period, a worrying scene involving Josh Anderson occurred.
The power forward took a bad fall as his knee was caught in Arthur Kaliyev’s legs and had to leave for the locker room.
Few expected him to return in the game, much less midway through the second period.
And that’s what happened.
In the meantime, things have happened.
-First, the spectators present at the match got their money’s worth: Finally, a first fight between Arber Xhekaj and Matt Rempe.
And let’s say that even if Rempe cheated by jumping on Xhekaj early, the CH defender taught him a good lesson with his left hand.
In addition, Christian Dvorak recreated the tie thanks to his 4th goal of the season (and second point of the match).
This time, it was the Habs’ turn to benefit from some good luck.
Brendan Gallagher also collected a second point in the game with the primary assist, while Alex Newhook now has four assists this season.
In this match in which we exchange goals each in turn, it was therefore the Rangers’ turn to score.
Mika Zibanejad took advantage of a numerical advantage to score his 9th goal of the season.
Adam Fox and Artemi Panarin were credited with an assist.
About five minutes into the match, the captain (once again) stood up leading by example in the best possible way.
He forced a turnover by taking the puck from the Rangers defender for his 14th goal of the season.
Unfortunately, Chris Kreider had to give his team the lead again.
So it was 4-3 for Rangers after 40 minutes of play.
Unlike the other two periods, it was rather quiet offensively in the third.
Only one goal was scored and Juraj Slafkovsky tied the score to send everyone into overtime.
Lane Hutson once again collected an assist, his 35th this season. It was therefore an eighth consecutive game for Hutson with at least one point.
Caufield also had an assist on the goal.
Jakub Dobes was smoking hot in overtime with several key saves on quality shots.
It set the tone quickly in this overtime period and who better than Patrik Laine to give victory to Sainte-Flanelle in this very intense match.
That already makes 12 for Laine this season.
CH’s next game will be Tuesday in Montreal against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Prolongation
– Overall, the match was fiercely contested. The two teams exchanged goals in the match in turn, in addition to generously distributing hits. There was also a lot of scrum and hubbub in stoppage time.
– It didn’t take long for Nick Suzuki to regain his beautiful smile, who had to repair his broken tooth against Toronto. And it seems to have paid off since he scored a goal.
