Canadiens Notebook: Jake Allen will be in goal for Habs Saturday night

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Claude Julien wouldn’t reveal who his starting goalie would be until the day of a game.

Dominique Ducharme is not Claude Julien.

The new Canadiens head coach announced Friday that Jake Allen will start in goal Saturday night in Winnipeg against the Jets (10 p.m., CBC, SN, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

Ducharme went with Carey Price in goal for his NHL head-coaching debut Thursday night in Winnipeg and the goalie allowed five goals on 29 shots in a 6-3 loss to the Jets (the sixth goal was an empty-netter). Price now has a 5-4-3 record with a 3.13 goals-against average and a .888 save percentage. Allen has a 4-2-1 record with a 2.14 goals-against average and a .932 save percentage. The Canadiens were shut out in both of Allen’s regulation-time losses.

Ducharme said Price would take some time to work with goalie coach Stéphane Waite.

“We want to be better in front of him,” Ducharme added. “There’s no question about that.”

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When asked if playing Price more often might be a way to get the goalie out of his slump, Ducharme said: “Everything is about balance. So we’re taking everything into consideration. If there’s one thing we have is we’ll be playing a lot of games, so he’s going to be playing a lot.”

After Saturday, the Canadiens don’t play again until Tuesday, when the Ottawa Senators will be at the Bell Centre.

Ducharme said Josh Anderson, who was injured late in the first period of Thursday night’s game, is day-to-day with a lower-body injury, but is hoping the big right-winger can play Saturday night.

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Check the rear-view mirror

The Canadiens (9-6-4) are in fourth place in the North Division, only two points ahead of the Calgary Flames (9-10-2), while holding two games in hand. The top four teams make the playoffs.

The Flames play the Senators Saturday afternoon in Ottawa (1 p.m., TSN5, SNW, RDS).

The Canadiens are winless in their last four games (0-2-2) and are 2-5-2 in their last nine games. Price is 0-2-1 in his last three games while giving up 14 goals and is 1-4-1 in his last six games.

“I think the first thing is playing better in front of him on the ice,” captain Shea Weber said when asked about Price’s struggles. “But I don’t think we want to make too big of a deal about anything with him. We’ll treat him just like any other teammate. It’s definitely not something that we’re dwelling on and we’re not concerned about it. We’re more concerned about the way we’re playing as a team and helping him out in front of him.

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“We’re not singling him out at all,” Weber added. “It’s a team game and we’re losing as a team right now. We’re not doing enough in front of him to help him and make his job easier right now. Our goal is to clean those things up and we know how good he is and we know what he’s done for this franchise and on and on and on. He’s an unbelievable talent, he’s an unbelievable player, and he’s going to be the difference-maker that we need. We just got to fix the problems in front of him and things will go on.”

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First full practice

Ducharme held his first full practice as Canadiens head coach Friday afternoon in Winnipeg.

What was his goal for the practice after only having a morning skate with the team on Thursday?

“Going back on the things that we talked about the first night (in a team meeting Wednesday),” Ducharme said. “A review on that. Practice and making sure that we cover that and then when the game starts tomorrow we’re a lot better on those things so that we can move forward and attack something else.

“Our guys want to win,” the coach added. “Last night there’s a lot of things that I liked in the first part of the game. It was not perfect. We can be much better than we were, even though it was better in the first part, but then we cracked. So we got to work to be able to sustain the kind of play that we want to have every night. So that’s it.”

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When asked what the most disappointing part of the game was for him, Ducharme said: “Disappointment … it was the first time we stepped on the ice talking about those things. So from there we’re moving forward.”

Thursday night’s game was the first of 18 in 34 days through the end of March, so there won’t be a lot of practice time for Ducharme to implement the changes he wants to put in place.

When asked how long it will take for him to put in place all the changes he wants to make, Ducharme said: “That’s a good question. It depends. I got to balance the guys over-thinking on the ice, not moving, and not giving enough. So finding the balance there and working through that. So it’s tough to put a timeline exactly to say: All right, we’ve covered everything and we’re going to be full throttle at that time. But one thing I want to make sure of is that when we go to bed tonight we’re going to be a better team than when we got up.”

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High expectations

Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin made it clear before the start of the season that expectations for the team are high this year after his off-season additions.

Are those expectations maybe weighing on the team now?

“I think the expectations are extremely high this year,” Weber said. “Seeing what we kind of accomplished in the (post-season) bubble there. I know it wasn’t much, but it was a glimmer of hope and to see what our team was coming to. And then with the additions we had through the off-season, I think that everyone expects a lot more and with that comes the added pressure you put on yourself.”

“Pressure … we got to be good controlling what we can control,” Ducharme said. “Our focus is on that. We can talk standings all day. We can talk about how much we want to win the next game. But if we don’t do it the right way, if we don’t take the right path to success, then it won’t happen as often as we want. So we want to build that so at one point we’re becoming consistent in the way we play and do things and then our results are going to be consistent on the positive side.”

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The high expectations are part of what cost Julien his job.

“It’s always difficult,” Weber said about Julien getting fired. “It’s a situation that nobody likes to see. It’s a tough business and it is a business. At the end of the day, it comes to results and as players we feel a lot of that falls on us, too. If we’re not getting the job done you look for answers. Obviously, guys get traded as well and that is a big part of the business as well. It’s hard on guys, and guys get sent down. It’s a tough business and nobody likes those hard parts of it. It’s happened now, we can’t dwell on it. Definitely feel as players that we would have liked to do more, but we’ve got to move forward and get better now.”

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Special-teams problems

Special teams are among the things Ducharme needs to fix to get the Canadiens back on track.

Through Thursday’s games, the Canadiens ranked 18th on the power play with a 19.3 per cent success rate and ranked 22nd in penalty-killing at 76.3 per cent.

“The first thing that we need to address on our power play is our mindset, our pace, our intensity,” Ducharme said. “We know every time you go on the power play there’s desperation on the other side. We need to be desperate on our side also. There’s a structure side and things that we need to work on. But the mindset’s got to be better.”

When asked about the penalty-killing, Ducharme said: “Better application of duties. Doing our job better. Obviously, on the PK you’re already one man short. At times we’ve been really, really good, and at times we struggle. Mostly assignments were missed. We want our guys to be accountable on that. Obviously, there’s always adjustments, but when we do things right our structure is good.”

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Fresh start for Tatar

The coaching change provided a fresh start for Tomas Tatar, who had been a healthy scratch for one game under Julien and was also taken off his regular line with Phillip Danault and Brendan Gallagher.

Ducharme reunited the line for his first game as head coach and Tatar responded by scoring his fifth goal of the season on the power play.

“It’s a fresh start for everyone, even for me who maybe didn’t have the best start,” said Tatar, who has 5-5-10 totals in 18 games. “Some things are changing and I want to help to get the team winning again.

“Obviously, I’m very happy to play with them,” Tatar added about being reunited with Danault and Gallagher. “We had so much success last year. I think our numbers were one of the highest in the NHL. We’re just so used to each other. We, as a line, have to be better. We want to work together and help the team to win more games.”

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It was surprising that Julien would make Tatar a healthy scratch for one game and also bench him for the final eight minutes of the third period and the entire overtime of another game during a period when the Canadiens were struggling to score goals. Tatar led the Canadiens in scoring last season with 22-39-61 totals and has had six straight 20-goal seasons.

“It wasn’t pretty, for sure,” Tatar said about sitting out. “During the regular season I’ve never been in that position. But I was still cheering for the guys to do the best result. But when you see it was a tough time to score and you were benched or you weren’t playing, it was tough. But it was a decision I could have a hard time to understand it. But I had to take it and be a pro about it and I was trying to work hard to prove I wanted to help the team and we were better with me in the lineup.”

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When asked if the coaching change was a positive for him, Tatar said: “I had two good years with Claude. I can’t thank him enough. He gave me an opportunity to play. This season was a little rough, but it’s coaching. Stuff happens. I’m kind of excited for a new fresh start and for myself, too. I would put it this way: I’m very excited Dom got the opportunity and hopefully we can squeeze the most out of it.”

The lines

Here’s how the forward lines and defence pairings looked at practice Friday:

Tatar – Danault – Gallagher
Drouin – Suzuki – Toffoli
Lehkonen – Kotkaniemi – Armia
Byron – Evans – Frolik
Perry

Chiarot – Weber
Edmundson – Petry
Kulak – Romanov
Mete

What’s next?

The Canadiens and Jets will play again Saturday night in Winnipeg (10 p.m., CBC, SN, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio).

Next week, the Canadiens will play three straight games at the Bell Centre. The Ottawa Senators will be the visitors on Tuesday (7 p.m., TSN2, TSN5, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM), followed by two games against the Jets on Thursday (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM) and Saturday (7 p.m., SNE, SNW, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

The Canadiens have a 3-5-0 record at the Bell Centre this season.

scowan@postmedia.com

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