Canadiens Game Day: Habs totally dominate Canucks in 5-1 victory

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What a feel-good game this was for the Canadiens.

The Canadiens beat the Canucks 5-1 Wednesday night in Vancouver and there were many positives to take away from it.

Phillip Danault finally scored his first goal of the season in the 25th game. Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Corey Perry, Shea Weber (power play) and Jeff Petry also scored.

The Canadiens outshot the Canucks 45-24 and goalie Carey Price allowed only one goal for his fourth straight game. After a slow start to the season, Price improved his record to 8-4-4 with a 2.59 goals-against average and a .906 save percentage.

Petry’s goal was his 10th of the season, the most by any NHL defenceman. He also becomes the first Canadiens defenceman to score 10 goals in the first 25 games or less of a season in more than 80 years. The last to do it was Georges Mantha, who scored 10 goals in the first 13 games in 1937-38. Petry is only three goals short of the career-high 13 he scored in 82 games with the Canadiens in 2018-19.

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With 10-14-24 totals this season, Petry ranks second among NHL defencemen in points, one behind Victor Hedman of the Tampa Bay Lightning, who has 5-20-25 totals. Petry’s defence partner, Joel Edmundson, was plus-4 Wednesday night against the Canucks, improving his league-best plus/minus figure to plus-26. Petry ranks second in the NHL at plus-16.

This was a totally dominating performance by the Canadiens, who improved their record to 12-6-7 (including 7-1-6 on the road) and are now 3-1-3 in the seven games since Dominique Ducharme took over as head coach from Claude Julien. The Canucks didn’t get their first shot on goal until 8:42 into the game and the Canadiens outshot Vancouver 16-4 in the first period.

The only goal the Canucks scored was on a power-play blast by Brock Boeser in the second period after Kotkaniemi and Perry had given the Canadiens a 2-0 lead.

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Ducharme said it was the Canadiens’ best game since he took over as head coach, even better than their 7-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets last Saturday night at the Bell Centre.

“We were relentless in what we were doing on both sides,” he said. “The pace of our game and relentless in everything that we were doing. And really we made it really hard for them. Then we could counter, we could go onto offence and again bring our speed because we were connected. That’s what we’re working on. We want to be that way in all situations being a block of five with or without the puck. You need to work, you need a lot of engagement for that and that’s what we saw tonight. That’s the way we want to be playing.”

On a night with so many positives, Danault was asked what stood out the most from a team standpoint.

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“I think the fact that we do it every game,” he said. “That’s five, six games that we repeat the same game every day. We come into practice we’re hard, sharp, we execute. I think that’s the positive thing. We just keep building, keep building. Like I said two days ago (following a 2-1 shootout loss to the Canucks), if we play like that every game we get a chance to win every game and we did it again tonight and we got a win.”

Monkey off Danault’s back

The smile on Danault’s face after finally scoring his first goal on a setup from Edmundson said it all.

He celebrated by pretending to throw a monkey off his back.

“I think there was more than one monkey,” Danault said with a big smile after the game. “I threw a bunch of monkeys off of my back.

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“It feels really good,” he added. “You try and work as hard as you can and doing the right things every game and sometimes it’s harder to score. You got to stay positive and it was a big process. I had to stay positive. My wife was big for me there and I got to give a hand to her as well. And also my teammates were really positive with me and they just supported me. They know the player I am, they know what I can do. They trust me and it happened tonight.”

Chiarot injures hand

With the score tied 0-0 at the 15:02 mark of the first period, the Canadiens’ Ben Chiarot and the Canucks’ J.T. Miller suddenly squared off for a fight after the puck dropped for a faceoff outside the Vancouver blue line.

There didn’t seem to be any reason for the staged fight with Chiarot landing a solid right hand to the middle of Miller’s visor. Chiarot immediately left for the locker room, throwing his helmet to the ground on the way and then looking at his injured hand.

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He was done for the night and after the game Ducharme said Chiarot won’t be able to play Thursday night against the Flames and that they would know more about the extent of his injury in the hours ahead with the team flying to Calgary after the game.

“(Miller) just came off the bench and asked Ben to fight,” Canadiens captain Shea Weber said after the game. “Ben stood up for himself and our team and, obviously, the boys fed off of that and ended up scoring shortly after that. So it was a great job by him.”

Kotkaniemi opened the scoring for the Canadiens 32 seconds after the fight.

Danault called Chiarot a “warrior” and a team player and also said the fight sparked the Canadiens. Even if it did, was it really worth it if Chiarot ends up being sidelined for an extended period of time?

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As a rookie with the Winnipeg Jets in 2014-15, Chiarot broke his left hand in a fight and ended up missing 16 games.

With the Canadiens down to five defencemen after Chiarot left the game, rookie Alexander Romanov got his first chance to play some shifts as Weber’s partner for the first time.

“I thought our defencemen did a great job tonight,” Ducharme said. “We saw different combinations, obviously, with five. It’s always easier I think on the Ds when we’re solid as a block of five (on the ice), when we’re compact as a team. That means not only defensively, but with the puck. So a lot of good things tonight.”

Mete will get his chance

Victor Mete, who has only played five games this season, will replace Chiarot Thursday night against the Flames. Mete has been a healthy scratch for the last eight games.

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“It’s nice to have Victor,” Ducharme said. “He’s got experience and we know what he can bring. He knows what we’re expecting of him. We’re comfortable. We have good depth and that’s the reason.”

Mete has experience playing as Weber’s partner.

“For sure it’s really tough for him,” Kotkaniemi said about his good friend Mete being a healthy scratch for so many games. “He works really hard every day and he always has a smile on his face when he comes to the rink and off-ice, too. He probably goes through a little tough times, but I’m sure that he will find a way to have success again.”

Mixing the lines

Ducharme switched up his lines for the game, putting Brendan Gallagher with Kotkaniemi and Tyler Toffoli, while Joel Armia took Gallagher’s regular spot on a line with Danault and Tomas Tatar.

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“I think it worked really good today,” Kotkaniemi said about his new line. “My job is actually really easy. Toff is really good with the puck and he always finds the guys wherever they are. Everyone knows Gally, he’s working really hard. He’s doing most of my jobs, too, so it’s really easy for me.”

Kotkaniemi had a good scoring chance in the slot early in the game but hesitated before shooting and Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko made the save.

“I think I just fumbled that a little bit,” Kotkaniemi said. “I think I just had a mindset to shoot that all the time. But if you don’t shoot you can’t score. That’s the truth and I think everyone needs to go with that.”

Kotkaniemi scored his third goal of the season later in the period when he one-timed a pass from Toffoli.

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Ducharme said the coaching staff is working with Kotkaniemi to get him to shoot more often.

The lines

Here’s how the Canadiens’ forward lines and defence pairings looked against the Canucks:

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

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Chiarot – Weber
Edmundson – Petry
Kulak – Romanov

Forward Artturi Lehkonen was a healthy scratch for the third straight game and the fifth time this season. Mete was a healthy scratch for the 20th time this season.

Some stats

The Canadiens outshot the Canucks 45-24 and outhit them 24-18, while the Canucks won 58 per cent of the faceoffs.

The Canadiens went 1-for-5 on the power play and the Canucks went 1-for-3.

Petry led the Canadiens in ice time with 23:28, while Weber had 22:34 and Edmundson had 22:18. Nick Suzuki led the forwards with 17:43 of ice time, followed by Toffoli with 17:36 and Josh Anderson with 17:26.

Armia and Petry led the Canadiens with five shots each, while Kotkaniemi, Tatar, Jonathan Drouin and Edmundson had four each.

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Armia has a team-leading four hits while Anderson, Paul Byron, Jake Evans and Romanov had three each.

Kotkaniemi went 6-5 on faceoffs (55 per cent), Danault went 8-11 (42 per cent), Suzuki went 7-11 (39 per cent) and Evans went 3-7 (30 per cent).

What’s next?

The Canadiens were flying to Calgary after Wednesday night’s game and will play the Flames Thursday night (9 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM) and again on Saturday night at the Saddledome (7 p.m., SNE, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).

Next week, the Canadiens will play the Jets in Winnipeg on Monday (8 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM) and Wednesday (9 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM), before returning to Montreal for six straight games at the Bell Centre.

scowan@postmedia.com

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