Time: 7:00pm ET
Place: Bell Centre – Montreal, QC
TV: BSDET, CITY, TVAS
Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket
Habs Blog: Eyes on the Prize
Montreal’s last win against Detroit was in March of 2019
Detroit is four games into the season and are pacing for 102.5 points. I don’t think that’s realistic, but even in the two losses the team has looked better than in similar situations from previous years. Getting outraced by Tampa is a good lesson in how much farther they have to go to run with the contenders and getting held down by a suffocating system is never fun, but turning an attempt to erase a 2-0 deficit in the third period into only an empty-netter instead of a 5-0 collapse is progress.
The concerns we’ve had going in are still concerns: can they score enough? Can their special teams win them games? Can the defense hold? Will the goalies play well enough to keep them in it?
We’ve got plenty more games to get those questions answered and there are two this weekend which will help us continue our excited quest to learn just how different this Red Wings squad is.
Montreal is an absolute mess. They’re 0-5 on the season and have put just four goals into the net. Their worst losses contributing to their -15 goal differential have been to Buffalo and San Jose. One of their four goals is on the power play (5.3% efficiency) and they’ve allowed 8 of their 19 goals against on the PK (55.6%). I could throw a number of additional stats here to really rub in just how terribly they’ve played so far but how much more convincing do you need?
Both teams have room for improvement and Montreal has room to break out of this. They’re not as bad as these early season numbers indicate and if Detroit isn’t careful they’re going to find themselves in the VERY unfamiliar territory of being in a trap game.
Also, you might have heard this but I want to make sure: Tyler Bertuzzi won’t be playing in this game. He’s going to be suspended without pay by the Red Wings for being unable to join the team in Canada due to his unvaccinated status. I’m going to compare this to Dylan Larkin missing the Wings’ second game of the season with a suspension: It happened. I don’t like that it happened. It was the result of a choice the player made. I have opinions about all of the circumstances which surrounded and led up to the situation where a Red Wings player missed a game due to making a choice and I wish all the things that led to it happening were better so it wouldn’t have happened.
Those are the similarities. I’d like everybody to do their fellow commenters a favor here and trust that they know the differences well enough that you don’t need to explain them. Just because they are similar doesn’t mean they are the same. Your reasons for feeling however you feel about them are yours. You understand why people feel differently about this than you do and you disagree with them. They understand why you feel differently than you do and they disagree with you. If they haven’t come across the magical statistic or the perfect beratement to change their mind elsewhere by this point, they’re not getting it from the comments on a hockey blog, get it?
Thanks and LGRW