Canadiens Game Day: Habs will be the rested team against Oilers – Montreal Gazette

EDMONTON — The Canadiens will be the rested team when they play the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night at Rogers Arena (7 p.m., SNE, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio).

While the Canadiens were relaxing in their downtown hotel Friday night, the Oilers were losing 5-2 to the Pittsburgh Penguins across the street at Rogers Place. Saturday’s game is a 5 p.m. start local time, so it’s a quick turnaround for the Oilers.

After getting off to a great start this season, winning their first five games and going 7-1-1 in their first nine, the Oilers now have a 19-15-4 record and are 1-5-0 in their last six games. Oilers superstar Connor McDavid, who leads the NHL in scoring with 20-39-59 totals, was held off the scoresheet for the second straight game Friday night and has only two assists in the last four games. Teammate Leon Draisaitl, who ranks second in NHL scoring with 21-37-58 totals, was also held off the scoresheet by the Penguins and was minus-4. Draisaitl is minus-11 for the season and McDavid is minus-1.

With McDavid and Draisaitl leading the way, the Oilers rank second in the NHL on the power play with a 29.8 per cent success rate, while the Canadiens rank 27th in penalty-killing at 75.2 per cent.

“With the skill they’ve got there you have to be disciplined and you got to stay out of the box,” Canadiens coach Claude Julien said about the Oilers after his team skated Friday on the practice rink at Rogers Place. “There’s not only speed there, but there’s skill. They can beat you one-on-one, but their power play is obviously a big weapon for them and the offensive game is their biggest weapon and has been for a long time. As I mentioned to the guys earlier, I think tomorrow for us our defensive game is going to have to be at its best if we expect to win a hockey game here.”

Centre Phillip Danault will be given the job of checking McDavid.

“I got to move my feet, that’s for sure,” Danault said after practice Friday. “Just stay on top of him.”

This will be the first of two meetings between the Canadiens and Oilers this season. The Oilers will be at the Bell Centre on Jan. 9.

No lineup changes

Julien won’t make any changes to the lineup that beat the Flames 4-3 in overtime Thursday night in Calgary.

Victor Mete said after practice Friday there was a chance he could return to the lineup Saturday against the Oilers after missing the last nine games with an ankle injury. But that won’t happen.

“Well, it’s not tonight,” Julien said when he met with the media Saturday afternoon and was asked when Mete might return. “So that’s all I can say for now. But he is continuing to get better. The hope is that maybe in a couple of days from now he’ll be ready to go.”

That means Mete could be in the lineup Monday when the Canadiens wrap up their Western Canada road trip in Winnipeg.

Jesperi Kotkaniemi will miss his seventh straight game Saturday with a concussion and the centre remains day-to-day. Mete and Kotkaniemi both skated with non-contact jerseys at practice Friday, but Mete stayed on the ice afterward to do contact drills with a member of the team’s training staff.

Defenceman Christian Folin will be a healthy scratch for the 21st time this season and for the fifth straight game since getting called back up from the AHL’s Laval Rocket. Folin hasn’t played a game with the Canadiens since Oct. 15. Forward Lukas Vejdemo will be the other healthy scratch. He was called up before the start of this Western Canada road trip and has yet to play a game in the NHL.

Habs on a roll

The Canadiens have won the first two games of their Western Canada road trip and are 5-1-0 in their last six games. Since going through an eight-game winless streak from Nov. 16 to Dec. 1, the Canadiens have a 6-2-0 record.

Heading into Saturday’s games, the Canadiens (17-12-6) were in second place in the Atlantic Division and had a 9-4-3 record on the road.

“We just had a commitment level to the way we need to play and once we started to do that it took a little bit of time for us to get results,” Brendan Gallagher said after practice Friday when asked how the Canadiens worked their way out of their eight-game slump. “But we took some belief in, you hate to say it, the little moral victories even though we were losing games. You could see that we were going in the right direction and you have that belief that eventually the results are going to come. And once they did now they are and we kind of want to continue to feel this way because we know how quickly it can go the other way as well.”

What’s the feeling in the Canadiens’ locker room now?

“It’s one of those things where you win the game, you feel good, and then you don’t really have too much time to feel good about yourself,” Gallagher said. “You got to move on to the next one.”

Where the Canadiens rank

Heading into Saturday’s game, the Canadiens ranked 12th in the NHL in offence, scoring an average of 3.14 goals per game, and ranked 20th in defence, allowing an average of 3.14. They ranked 10th on the power play (21.2 per cent), 27th in penalty-killing (75.2 per cent) and 15th in faceoffs (50.1 per cent).

Tomas Tatar led the Canadiens in scoring with 13-17-30 totals, followed by Shea Weber (11-18-29), Gallagher (15-13-28), Phillip Danault (7-19-26) and Max Domi (7-16-23).

Price had a 15-10-3 record with a 2.84 goals-against average and a .907 save percentage.

Where the Oilers rank

The Oilers ranked 20th in the NHL in offence, scoring an average of 2.87 goals per game, and ranked 16th in defence, allowing an average of 3.05. The ranked second on the power play (29.8 per cent), sixth in penalty-killing (84.3 per cent) and 27th in faceoffs (48.0 per cent).

McDavid led the Oilers and the NHL in scoring with 20-39-59 totals, followed by Draisaitl (21-37-58), Zack Kassian (13-12-25), James Neal (16-7-23) and Oscar Klefbom (3-19-22).

What’s next?

The Canadiens will fly to Winnipeg after Saturday’s game and enjoy a day off on Sunday with no practice before wrapping up their Western Canada road trip Monday against the Jets (8 p.m., TSN2, TSN3, RDS, TSN 690 Radio). The Canadiens will then enjoy a four-day Christmas break in the schedule before hitting the road again for games against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, Dec. 28, the Florida Panthers on Sunday, Dec. 29, and the Carolina Hurricanes on New Year’s Eve.

scowan@postmedia.com

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