Sports

Missed opportunities leave Canadiens frustrated after loss to Coyotes – Sportsnet.ca

Published

5 years ago

February 11, 2020

MONTREAL— Brendan Gallagher said it perfectly as he made his way out of the dressing room following his 10-minute media session and a 3-2 loss for his Montreal Canadiens.

Gallagher yelled a four-letter expletive at the top of his lungs.

Indeed.

The Canadiens needed to win on Monday, but after taking a 2-0 lead on Gallagher’s goal at the 1:52 mark of the first period they squandered this game. Between his 19th marker of the season and the Coyotes making it 2-2 in the 17th minute of the second period they had three power-play opportunities and a full two minutes at 5-on-3, but failed to score. And it was in the second minute of the middle frame that their most important centre, Phillip Danault, was struck in the face by a shot that knocked out some of his teeth, cut him deep enough for stitches and forced him out of the game.

Danault did not return, and as the Canadiens were attempting to kill off the final seconds of a late third-period penalty to Joel Armia, his presence was sorely missed. The Coyotes got a goal from Jakob Chychrun with exactly one minute left and that was that.

Meanwhile, two of three teams the Canadiens are chasing in the standings, the Columbus Blue Jackets and Florida Panthers, lost in regulation. Not getting at least a point felt like a massively missed opportunity—not unlike Tomas Tatar’s miss on a 2-on-1 that would have given Montreal a 3-2 lead in the dying minutes of the third, or all the misses on their power-play opportunities before that.

So yeah, Gallagher summed it up pretty well as he left the room.

And teammate Nate Thompson was on the mark about where the Canadiens go from here.

“Win or loss, you have to move on,” the 35-year-old said. “We don’t have time to sulk here. We have to move on and get ready for Boston.”

It is against the NHL-leading Bruins that the improbable push towards the playoffs will continue for the Canadiens on Wednesday. They will not have their best defenceman at their disposal for that game—they’re waiting for conclusive results on the lower-body injury Shea Weber suffered in New Jersey one week ago—and it’s entirely possible Danault, who requires dental work according to Canadiens coach Claude Julien, won’t be available either.

As one Montreal player said, “It didn’t look good when he went down, but we don’t know how serious it is.”

Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman talk to a lot of people around the hockey world, and then they tell listeners all about what they’ve heard and what they think about it.

Tatar wasn’t entirely sure what happened on the play in question after the puck left his stick, but he was mortified to see it had struck Danault and left him face-down on the ice.

“I don’t know if it hit something,” the Canadiens’ leading scorer said.

Tatar’s shot hit Coyotes defenceman Jordan Oesterle’s skate and deflected into Danault’s face, and the Canadiens fell apart for the next 17-and-a-half minutes.

They were out-shot 16-3 and out-scored 1-0. And despite their push in the third, they couldn’t solve Coyotes goaltender Antti Raanta.

“We didn’t create enough,” said Gallagher.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” he said to explain why they missed on their four-minute power play that started in the final two minutes of the first period and bled into the first three minutes of the second—and on the 5-on-3 opportunity they got in between. “All over it, we weren’t good; entries weren’t good; once we got set up, we didn’t shoot the puck enough; we didn’t find a way to get loose pucks. It just wasn’t good enough. And we know the answer, we just didn’t execute. We didn’t do it and that’s the disappointing part.”

You can’t really blame Gallagher and the Canadiens for being frustrated about that. You can’t blame them for being frustrated about letting precious points in the standings slip away.

They have fought tooth-and-nail to keep their slim playoff hopes alive—winning nine of the 12 games leading into Monday’s contest despite continuing to deal with a rash of injuries to key players. Just when it appears promising that they’ll return to full health, they lose irreplaceable players.

FANTASY POOL ALERT!

Play the Sportsnet Fantasy Hockey Pool presented by RAM for your chance to drive away with a 2020 RAM 1500 Sport or win cash prizes! It’s FREE and easy to play!

Gallagher missed a total of 10 games with a concussion and only returned to action on Jan. 30. Jonathan Drouin was the team’s third-leading scorer when he suffered a torn tendon in his left wrist that knocked him out of action from Nov. 15-Feb. 8. Paul Byron, a key two-way player and an assistant captain, was lost in the same game as Drouin and hasn’t played since. Armia, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Victor Mete all suffered injuries that kept them out of big games along the way. And to see Danault go down just two games after Weber has to feel like a gut-punch for this group.

“He does so much for us,” said Gallagher. “You see when he goes he literally plays in every situation. We put a lot of responsibility on him and he takes a lot of pride in that. It’s one of those things (that) when you lose bodies like that it’s not really one guy that can replace him, because he is so important. But I think you just throw a little bit more responsibility to everyone, which we’ll find out how he’s doing but we may need to deal with (his absence).”

We’d say the word he screamed afterward was the most appropriate way to describe that situation.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Source link

Sports

Flames remain hot in pre-season, beat Canucks 4-2

Published

3 hours ago

September 28, 2024

Anne Joseph

CALGARY – Ryan Lomberg and Brayden Pachal each had a goal and assist on Saturday night to lead the Calgary Flames to a 4-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks in NHL pre-season action.

Blake Coleman and Adam Klapka also scored for Calgary, which is 4-0-1 through five games.

Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Aatu Ratyu were the marksmen for Vancouver, which is 2-2 in exhibition play.

Dan Vladar, who stopped 17 of 19 shots in 40 minutes of action, got the win. Devin Cooley made nine stops in relief.

Artus Silovs, beaten four times on 24 shots, gave way to Nikita Tolopilo to start the third. Tolopilo had eight saves.

Calgary opened the scoring at 4:23 when Pachal’s rising wrist shot from the blue line through a maze of bodies eluded Silovs, who never saw it.

The Flames surged in front 2-0 three minutes later when Lomberg corralled a MacKenzie Weegar rebound in the slot and fired a shot just inside the goalpost.

Lomberg, 29, who broke into the NHL as a Flame in 2017-18, re-signed in the off-season in Calgary as a free agent after four years with the Florida Panthers, which was capped off by winning the Stanley Cup.

Vancouver got on the scoreboard at 8:35 of the second on a fortuitous bounce.

Lekkerimaki’s shot from the slot deflected off Flames defenceman Artem Grushnikov, went high into the air, and with seemingly nobody aware of where the puck went, it toppled over Vladar and landed in the Calgary net.

Since being drafted by Vancouver in the first round, in 2022, Lekkerimaki has spent the past two seasons in his native Sweden.

This will be the 20-year-old’s first season in North America and with three points (1 goal, 2 assists) in three games in the pre-season, he’s making a push for a job with the Canucks.

One of the players he is competing against is Raty, who after Calgary had taken a 3-1 lead, again got the Canucks back within one on a perfect shot after being set up on a 2-on-1 by Conor Garland.

Raty, a second-round pick in 2021, was acquired from the New York Islanders in the Bo Horvat trade. He’s spent most of the past two seasons in the AHL.

The Flames restored their two-goal cushion later in the second with Klapka firing a shot past Silovs for his third goal in as many pre-season games.

Klapka, who stands 6-foot-8, is looking to make the team’s fourth line. The 24-year-old has shown some offensive pop with three goals in as many pre-season games.

His physicality was also on display Saturday, throwing an open-ice hit in the first period on Nils Aman that sent the Canucks forward flying. In the third, a heavy hit on Akito Hirose send the defenceman careening into the sideboards. Hirose had to be helped off the ice.

UNEXPECTED OFFENCE

Known more for his physicality, Pachal has never had a multi-point game in his 62 career NHL regular-season games. The 24-year-old was in his fifth season with the Vegas Golden Knights organization when he was claimed off waivers by Calgary last February.

HUBERDEAU-MANTHA COMBO

Left-winger Jonathan Huberdeau played in his second pre-season game for Calgary and has been the case throughout camp, the right-winger was veteran Anthony Mantha, who the Flames signed to a one-year deal as a free agent. On this night, Yegor Sharangovich was at centre. In the first game, the two were centred by Martin Pospisil.

UP NEXT

Canucks: Visit the Edmonton Oilers on Monday.

Flames: Host the Seattle Kraken on Monday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.

Source link

Sports

Oilers end pre-season skid with 5-4 win over Kraken

Published

3 hours ago

September 28, 2024

Anne Joseph

EDMONTON – When the key to a win is work ethic, it is not surprising to see Mattias Ekholm rise to the occasion.

Ekholm had a goal and two assists as the Edmonton Oilers snapped a three-game skid with a 5-4 victory over the Seattle Kraken on Saturday.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Noah Philp, Vasily Podkolzin and Raphael Lavoie also scored for the Oilers, who improved to 2-3 in NHL pre-season play.

“They are a hard-working team, no matter who they have in the lineup, so we expected that,” said Oilers forward Derek Ryan, who picked up a couple of assists.

“There were points in the game where we were kind of matching that intensity and work ethic and things were going well for us. We let the work ethic dip a little bit and then the game gets away from us. It is a good message to the guys who were playing and the whole group that it starts with work.”

Jacob Melanson, Eduard Sale, John Hayden and Ben Meyers responded for the Kraken, who fell to 1-3 in exhibition action.

“I thought we were getting up the ice well, playing fast, playing north,” said Meyers. “I think we probably just gave up a little bit too much to win that game, but I thought offensively we played pretty well and we had our chance.”

The Oilers started the scoring just over three minutes into the opening period as both defenders tried to cover Connor McDavid on a two-on-one, but he made a nice backhand pass back to Nugent-Hopkins, who beat Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer upstairs blocker side.

Seattle tied the game nine minutes into the first after Oilers goalie Calvin Pickard made a couple of saves in tight before Melanson was able to poke it in from the crease.

Pickard left the game soon afterwards after teammate Noah Philp got angled into his own netminder, hitting him in the head. Pickard did not return to the game.

Olivier Rodrigue replaced Pickard in the Edmonton net and surrendered a power-play goal with six minutes to play in the first as Ryan Winterton lifted a deft pass over a defender across to Sale for the goal.

Edmonton knotted the game with 2:43 remaining in the first frame as Ekholm spotted Philp driving the net and completed a long saucer pass through a couple Kraken players to allow him to wrist it home.

Seattle made it 3-2 5:32 into the second period after Rodrigue attempted to direct a puck away from the net, only to have it hit Hayden and carom into his net.

With two minutes left in the middle period, the Kraken added to their lead as Meyers elected to shoot on a two-on-one opportunity, beating the Oilers’ goalie upstairs.

Edmonton got that goal back just 26 seconds later as Derek Ryan threaded the needle to a trailing Ekholm and he beat Grubauer to make it 4-3.

The Oilers tied the game six minutes into the third on a short-handed tally as Ryan made a great play to draw the defenders his way before sending it over to Podkolzin for the easy tap-in.

Edmonton avoided overtime with 2:53 remaining in the final frame as Lavoie battled hard to retrieve the puck before swinging out front and sending a shot through Grubauer’s legs.

Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch has been impressed with Lavoie’s skills as a sniper.

“He’s got good hands and an even better shot,” he said. “He showed great skill on that goal.”

NOTES

The Oilers still had 41 players in camp — with four goalies, 13 defencemen and 24 forwards. … Seattle was down to 37 players at camp — 33 skaters and four goalies — after cutting eight players before Friday’s contest against Vancouver. … Edmonton had both of the players in camp who are on PTOs in the lineup on Saturday, forward Mike Hoffman and defenceman Travis Dermott. … Grubauer made his first appearance since last Sunday’s 6-1 loss to Calgary, during which he allowed four goals on 19 shots.

UP NEXT

Kraken: Visit the Calgary Flames on Monday.

Oilers: Host the Vancouver Canucks on Monday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.

Source link

Sports

Dean scores first MLS goal as Fire tie visiting Toronto FC 1-1

Published

4 hours ago

September 28, 2024

Anne Joseph

CHICAGO (AP) — Jonathan Dean scored his first Major League Soccer goal in the 84th minute for the Chicago Fire on Saturday night in a 1-1 draw with Toronto FC.

Ariel Lassiter cut back to evade a defender and the played an arcing ball from the left corner of the area to the back post, where a charging Dean tapped in a one-touch finish from point-blank range to cap the scoring.

Prince Owusu converted from the penalty spot in first-half stoppage time to give Toronto (11-17-4) a 1-0 lead at halftime.

Chicago (7-16-9) has just one win and four losses in its last six games.

Chris Brady a save for the Fire.

Sean Johnson stopped two shots for Toronto.

—

AP MLS:

Source link