Montreal vs Rangers : Canadiens ‘ready for anything’ in Game 6 #hockey #nhl #ch #canadien #habs #rangers #playoffs

Canadiens goaltender Carey Price was back on the ice Wednesday morning in Brossard before the Canadiens’ optional practice. Price, who is recovering from a knee injury suffered in Game 1 of this series, did some lateral movements across the ice and also manned the net with goaltending coach Stéphane Waite shooting pucks his way.

source : faceoff.com

The Canadiens’ playoff hopes will be on the line again Thursday night when they face the New York Rangers in another elimination game.

Whatever the outcome in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference final, it’s hard to imagine a carbon copy of Tuesday’s game that featured a total of 11 goals.

The Habs staved off elimination with their 7-4 win.

Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said he liked a lot of things from the game — how his team was involved offensively and how the players handled themselves on the power play.

“The defensive aspects are always something that you can work on and improve very quickly,”
Therrien said before the Canadiens left for New York on Wednesday.

The Canadiens built what briefly looked like a comfortable 4-1 lead on Tuesday, blew it when the Rangers scored three times in under five minutes, then surged ahead when Rene Bourque scored two more goals and earned a hat trick.

The Rangers lead the best-of-seven series 3-2 and head into Thursday’s game with the chance to eliminate the Canadiens on home ice at Madison Square Garden (8 p.m. CBC, RDS, TSN Radio 690).

The Canadiens have to make sure they’re sharp in front of their net and not “giving those Grade-A chances,” defenceman Josh Gorges said.

“But I don’t think we want to change too much, just be a little sharper in a few areas.

“We’ll be ready for one of those tight-checking games, which I’m sure it will be again — one of those hard-fought games that we’re going to have to make sure that we’re even better than we were last game,” Gorges added.

The Canadiens need to be better defensively, David Desharnais acknowledged.

“But I like our compete level, and that’s what’s important,” he said.

Two of the games in the series have ended in overtime. A third game saw nine goals scored and another had 11.

“We’ve seen a lot of different hockey, a lot of different kind of games throughout this series,” Canadiens forward Lars Eller said.

“So you’ve got to expect everything and be ready for anything. Nothing should catch you by surprise by now.”

“But for us, we want to see a lot of the same things that we did yesterday going into the next game. (Tuesday night) was probably the best game we’ve played in this series. So if we keep doing a lot of those things then I think the end result will be good.

“I think it’s been completely unpredictable,” Eller said of the series.
“Game 1 was just a game you want to forget and just a game where everything that could go wrong went wrong.

“Then we played really good Game 2, lose. Didn’t play very good Game 3, won. Game 4, up in the air, could have gone either side. And Game 5 we played the best hockey in this series. Some games have been not very many goals. And some games 10 goals have been scored. It’s been a weird series.”

Bourque led the Habs’ offence in Game 5 and sealed their victory with his hat trick.

“Even at the end of the regular season, we saw Rene engaged in the game a lot more, moving his feet, being physical, going hard to the net,” Therrien said.

“He’s doing a lot of good things. You can’t expect a player to score three goals every night or score every game. But even when he doesn’t score, he’s playing solid hockey. He’s getting involved physically. And definitely last night, for me, that was leadership. It was a huge game for us. He came up big, and that’s good not only for him, but for us. I really appreciate his effort last night.”

Alex Galchenyuk, who missed six weeks with a knee injury and returned to action in Game 2 of this series, also played well on Tuesday, scoring the Canadiens’ first goal.

He’s getting better every game and that’s a great sign, Therrien said.
Tuesday’s game was definitely Galchenyuk’s best, the coach added.

“He was involved in the play. He was making plays in tight. He’s got good skill. He was competing.”

Notes: Canadiens goaltender Carey Price was back on the ice Wednesday morning in Brossard before the Canadiens’ optional practice with goaltending coach Stéphane Waite and Graham Rynbend, the team’s head athletic therapist. Price, who is recovering from a knee injury suffered in Game 1 of this series, did some lateral movements across the ice and also manned the net with Waite shooting pucks his way.

Brandon Prust will be back in the lineup Thursday night after serving a two-game suspension for his hit on Rangers forward Derek Stepan, who suffered a broken jaw on the play. Therrien said defenceman Alexei Emelin, who didn’t play Tuesday due to an undisclosed injury, would travel to New York with the team.


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Habs vs Rangers : Party time isn't over in Montreal as Habs force Game 6 #habs #hockey #rangers #playoffs

source : Faceoff.com

It grew progressively more chaotic the closer you got to the Bell Centre, with a street party thriving through sporadic bursts of rain. There was a tent with a mechanical bull, a tent with beer and a tent giving free Montreal Canadiens tattoos — the holy trinity for anyone looking for a wild night.

It was end of days. The Canadiens were facing elimination. It might as well be a party, be a bit of fun in the face of the end. And that is exactly what happened.

Rene Bourque scored three goals for the first playoff hat-trick of his career, delivering the host team to a 7-4 win over the New York Rangers in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final. In short, he helped to save their season.

Montreal will travel back to Manhattan for Game 6 on Thursday, with a chance to tie the series and send it back one more time for a Game 7 at home on Saturday. That would possibly be one of the most electric evenings in recent hockey history.

Nothing has been assured in this series, of course, and there is no reason to think that will begin now. Rangers centre Derek Stepan was another example of the unexpected, scoring twice in defeat in his first game back after undergoing surgery to repair a broken jaw.

The animosity between the teams continued building. Rangers defenceman John Moore was ejected for a head hit on Canadiens winger Dale Weise midway through the third period. Weise was wobbly, caught by defenceman P.K. Subban.

“John is definitely not the type of player to try to hurt someone,” said Rangers coach Alain Vigneault, “but it was a late hit and it was the right call on the ice.”

The crowd was livid.

It was hard to overstate the feeling of importance attached to the game in Montreal, a city where every second car seemed to have a Canadiens flag flapping from a side window. It was not just the cars, either: Banners hung in store windows, from the back of fire trucks, and one stood three storeys high on the top of a downtown construction project.

A church on the east side of town posted a notice on its front door. It invited anyone who wanted to listen to the game to do so from the comfort of the church. Doors were to open at 7 p.m., one hour before the puck dropped at the city’s primary venue of worship.

In following that vein, the day had begun with talk of a saviour. Carey Price appeared in full pads on the ice at the team’s suburban practice facility early Tuesday morning, with two members of the team’s staff watching closely.

He had not played since the series opener and, despite early speculation, he was not able to play in
the elimination game. As coach Michel Therrien said, it was only part of what the doctors had prescribed in his rehabilitation, and not a miracle come to life.

That left the burden squarely on the shoulders of Dustin Tokarski, the 24-year-old rookie who has been in net since Game 2. He stole Game 3 in New York, and nearly did it again in Game 4, before Martin St. Louis fired a perfect shot past him in overtime.

On Tuesday, the Canadiens did their best to relieve some of that burden. Montreal skaters fired up ice to start the first period. Alex Galchenyuk, who hit a crossbar late in the third period of Game 4, deflected a Subban shot to give Montreal the 1-0 lead.

The Canadiens carried a 2-1 lead into first intermission. They built it all the way up to 4-1 in the second period, on a cruise back to Manhattan for Game 6. Montreal chased Henrik Lundqvist from the net after Tomas Plekanec, Max Pacioretty and Bourque scored.

“You know what? Rene Bourque played a great game,” Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said. “On the forecheck, he took the man. He was moving his feet … he’s a very good scorer, so definitely that was a great performance by him.”

Montreal was doing everything its players had pledged they would do; creating traffic in front of the net, clearing the zone when necessary and staying on the attack. It worked in the second round, they said, when the Canadiens fought off a pair of elimination games to oust the Boston Bruins in seven games.

“We’ve been there, two weeks ago,” Therrien had said. “And it’s about preparation. It’s about attitude.”

They had it and then they found some more.

And then, in a span of less than five minutes of the second period, they lost it. Rick Nash was credited with a goal when the puck deflected off Canadiens defenceman Josh Gorges and past Tokarski. They kept pushing, with Stepan scoring his second of the game before Chris Kreider — the series villain who knocked Price out in Game 1 — scored to tie it.

 Bourque stopped the backward flow with five to play in the second. And his third gave a renewed sense of belief seven minutes into the third period. Hats rained down to the ice, the crowd rediscovered its full voice again.

It was bedlam. Chaos. It was a party, just as it was when the night began.

Habs remain confident while facing elimination in Game 6

Source : faceoff.com


There’s a fine line between confidence and reality as the Canadiens prepare to meet the Boston Bruins Monday night at the Bell Centre in Game 6 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series (7:30 p.m., CBC, RDS, TSN Radio 690).

It’s an elimination game for the Canadiens, who trail the best-of-seven series 3-2 after dropping a 4-2 decision to the Bruins Saturday night at Boston’s TD Garden.

“We knew what we’re getting into in this series,” captain Brian Gionta said Sunday after the team held an optional workout in Brossard. “They’re a good team. We’re playing at home. For the most part of the series we’ve outplayed them and we feel comfortable.”

“Some of our guys have done this before,” added David Desharnais, who was referring to the last playoff meeting between these teams in 2011, when the Canadiens won Game 6 at home and then lost
in overtime in Boston in Game 7. “We’re in front of our fans and we like the way we play at home.”

The confidence in the Canadiens’ dressing room might stem from the fact they never trailed in this series until the loss Saturday gave the Bruins a 3-2 lead. There’s an argument to be made the
Canadiens could have swept this series — they had a late two-goal lead in Game 2 and a Boston bounce produced a 1-0 overtime win for the Bruins in Game 4.

But it would be a mistake to say the Canadiens have outplayed the Bruins for most of this series, even though they have held the lead for the majority of it. The Canadiens have Carey Price and the power play to thank for a split of the first four games, but the Bruins have the momentum going into Game 6.

No matter how well Price and the defence play, the Canadiens have to find a way to score on a Boston defence that has played better with each game.

Game 5 saw the Bruins take a page out of the Canadiens’ playbook as they used the power play to take a 3-0 lead. The Bruins and the Canadiens each scored twice on the power play, but the key to the game was when those goals were scored.

Referees Eric Furlatt and Wes McCauley kept the lid on a potentially explosive game — the antics started when Brendan Gallagher and the Bruins’ Brad Marchand started sparring before the opening faceoff — by calling penalties early in the game.

The Canadiens had three power plays in the first period and failed to score. The Bruins also had three power plays and took a 2-0 lead early in the second period when Reilly Smith scored on a power play that spilled over from the first period. Twenty-six seconds after Smith scored, Tomas Plekanec took his third minor penalty of the game and it took only six seconds for Jarome Iginla to give Boston a 3-0 lead.

Gallagher and P.K Subban would score power-play goals later in the game, but the Canadiens left Boston talking about how the Bruins took away their time and space.

It was another frustrating night for Max Pacioretty and Thomas Vanek. Pacioretty matched Subban with a game-high six shots on goal, but none of Pacioretty’s shots produced a rise in Tuukka Rask’s heartbeat. Vanek had one shot and complained Sunday that the Bruins weren’t giving him any good looks.

“We knew all along that Boston had depth, but so do we,” Vanek said. “This series is about depth. We need to get everyone going and I’m part of that group. We’ve got to raise our game,”

After Sunday’s practice, Therrien ducked a question about his decision to play Brandon Prust in place of Daniel Brière in Game 5. Prust was the only Canadien centre to win more than 50 per cent of his faceoffs — he won four of five — but otherwise he made a minimal contribution and you shouldn’t be surprised if Brière is back in the lineup Monday.

If the Canadiens win Monday, the series returns to Boston for Game 7 Wednesday night.


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