GAME DAY PREVIEW: Game Thirty- Canucks vs Montreal

VANCOUVER CANUCKS (12-15-2) vs MONTREAL CANADIENS (11-6-7)

ROGERS ARENA- VANCOUVER, BC

8:00PM PST

TV: SPORTSNET PACIFIC, TSN2. RADIO: SPORTSNET 650

OPPOSING BLOG: HABS EYES ON THE PRIZE

*For me and any other fans in the Eastern and Atlantic time zones.

For most of that game, it looked a lot like another one of those games where they did everything they needed to do to beat Montreal except the most important thing: beat Carey Price. And then, with Thatcher Demko on the bench and less than a minute on the clock, Adam Gaudette scored a massive goal to send the game to overtime.

While it doesn’t completely erase the sting of those previous losses to the Canadiens, it most certainly was a confidence building win for the team, as they came back to beat Montreal for the 2nd time this season. Sadly, both of these wins came in the shootout, so they weren’t able to gain much ground on the team they’re chasing. The Habs also still hold 5 games in hand on the Canucks, which is extremely less than optimal in the 2nd half of the season.

They’re going to be without Elias Pettersson for at least another week still, and this has been an excellent chance for them to step up as a team and deal with added adversity (this time, it was not of their own doing). And apart from him returning, it’s gonna take an injury to get someone else into the lineup right now, because what they have going seems to be working, so why mess with it, right?

LINEUPS

Courtesy of nhl.com, this is somewhat accurate in terms of what we’ll see tonight:

Canadiens projected lineup

Jonathan Drouin — Nick Suzuki — Josh Anderson

Tyler Toffoli — Jesperi Kotkaniemi — Brendan Gallagher

Tomas Tatar — Phillip Danault — Joel Armia

Paul Byron — Jake Evans — Corey Perry

Ben Chiarot — Shea Weber

Joel Edmundson — Jeff Petry

Brett Kulak — Alexander Romanov

Carey Price

Jake Allen

Scratched: Victor Mete, Artturi Lehkonen

Injured: None

Canucks projected lineup

Nils Hoglander — J.T. Miller — Brock Boeser

Tanner Pearson — Bo Horvat — Jake Virtanen

Marc Michaelis — Brandon Sutter — Adam Gaudette

Antoine Roussel — Jay Beagle — Jayce Hawryluk

Alexander Edler — Nate Schmidt

Quinn Hughes — Travis Hamonic

Jordie Benn — Tyler Myers

Thatcher Demko

Braden Holtby

Scratched: Jalen Chatfield, Olli Juolevi, Zack MacEwen

Injured: Elias Pettersson (upper body), Justin Bailey (upper body), Tyler Motte (undisclosed), Micheal Ferland (head)

The Habs were shuffling right wingers around at practice yesterday, and we could see more of that from Dominique Ducharme tonight if he doesn’t like how things are going. The Canucks will have Jordie Benn in tonight. Benn missed almost all of the 3rd period after blocking a shot.

GAME DAY CHATTER

GAME DAY BATTLE HYMN

The metal world suffered another massive loss with word the other day that ENTOMBED vocalist Lars-Göran Petrov had lost his battle with cancer at the age of 49. Entombed was one of the bands that really got me into death metal, and they literally spawned an entire scene in Sweden that has led to dozens of bands that probably wouldn’t exist if not for this groundbreaking act. Their sound and style evolved, but always had that utter heaviness behind it that made it unmistakable. Petrov’s vocals were one of the major factors behind this, and he was an influence on a ton of modern day singers. Here’s a handful of tracks throughout his career that show the evolution of the band. The title track from their debut album Left Hand Path, a cover of a MISFITS classic, and one of my favorite tracks off the ‘Uprising’ album. RIP.