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Armia And Other Canadiens Veterans Heat Up In Win Vs Blues

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Canadiens forward Joel Armia

The Montreal Canadiens hosted the St-Louis Blues at the Bell Centre on Saturday night, hoping to put an end to their dreadful seven-game losing streak.

Habs fans were treated to a much better effort by the home team, including five Canadiens goals, a rare, yet encouraging display of offence from Martin St-Louis’ team.

The Canadiens ended up winning 5-4 in a barnburner that ranks among the most exciting games of the season.

Veteran Pushback

Joel Armia’s revenge tour continues!

The veteran winger scored his second goal in as many games, which is hopefully a sign that the bad luck he incurred after walking under a ladder while a black cat crossed his path and caused him to shatter the mirror he was carrying, is over.

It was a classic Armia goal, involving a lot of puck control and a great shot after he recognized his defensive coverage blew a tire. Jake Evans also featured on the goal, a continuation of his recent uptick in play after a difficult start to the season.

The goal also represented a rare instance of secondary scoring from the bottom six.

Armia followed it up with yet another goal, capitalizing on yet another solid shift by the third line, including a solid effort by Evgenii Dadonov and Evans.

Don’t look now, but Joel Armia may be the Canadiens’ hottest player at the moment.

Drought Buster

Kirby Dach isn’t counted upon to score as often as Cole Caufield, who happens to be one of the most valuable snipers in the NHL at the moment, but his lack of production in recent games was becoming difficult to ignore.

Dach hit the scoresheet just once in the last seven games and hadn’t scored a goal since December 14th’s game against the Ottawa Senators.

He put an end to his 10-goal scoreless streak on Saturday night, putting the finishing touches on an excellent second-period power play that displayed the type of puck movement we often witness from teams with an efficient man-advantage strategy.

It also helped that Nick Suzuki had hit the post mere seconds before Dach scored, which put the fear of god into the Blues’ defence, and opened up passing lanes for the Canadiens captain, who found Dach with a great assist into a high-danger area.

Sneaky Suzuki

Caufield scored his 23rd goal of the season, because that’s what Caufield does, but keep an eye on Suzuki in the video below.

He decided to hide behind Jordan Binnington like a cat trying to surprise its owner, and it was incredibly effective.

Suzuki may not be scoring a ton of goals lately, but he’s continuously making intelligent plays that tend to go unnoticed, but in this case, his great decision-making was impossible to miss.

Kent Hughes Is Smiling

Jonathan Drouin also had quite a night, not only because he scored his first goal of the season, but also due to some solid play in all three zones.

The goal may officially belong to Josh Anderson if the NHL decides to review it, but the play itself was due to Drouin’s strong drive to the net.

The only negative aspect of the play was that Drouin was replacing Juraj Slafkovsky, who was yet again benched by Martin St-Louis for no apparent reason.

If players like Armia, Drouin, and Dadonov can continue to put together solid performances, it may end up being an interesting trade deadline for Kent Hughes and the Montreal Canadiens.


The Canadiens are back in action on Monday, hosting the Seattle Kraken at the Bell Centre. The puck drop is scheduled for 7 PM ET.

 

All Montreal Canadiens statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted, via Natural Stat Trick.