For the first time in its history, the Montreal Canadiens will face the Utah Hockey Club in Salt Lake City on Tuesday evening.
The two teams had already met at the end of November, André Tourigny’s team having had the upper hand with a score of 3 to 2 in overtime. However, a lot has changed since then.
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Thus, the Canadian has been one of the best teams in the National Hockey League (NHL) for more than a month, while the Utah club is experiencing a lot of difficulties these days.
In fact, since December 14, the CH has had a performance of 9-3-1, the fourth best on the circuit. The Salt Lake City-based team, for its part, has a much less stellar record of 5-6-2, good for 24th in the NHL.
Captain Clayton Keller’s teammates are coming off a 2-1 loss to the New York Islanders. Moreover, they have only won two of their last eight games.
At the Habs, the state of health of striker Alex Newhook remains to be monitored, he who did not participate in his team’s training on Monday due to flu. In front of the net, Samuel Montembeault should be back. He had a spectacular 35-save performance during CH’s 2-1 shootout loss to the Dallas Stars on Saturday night.
