What do the Canadiens need to do to beat the Hurricanes?
The Montreal Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes will get their Eastern Conference Final matchup underway on Thursday night in Raleigh with a spot in the Stanley Cup Final on the line.
The No. 1 seed in the East, the Hurricanes have not lost one game yet in this playoffs, let alone four in a single series, but the Canadiens, after sweeping Carolina in the regular season, may be uniquely positioned to pull off the upset.
With speed, skill, and a knack for opportunistic scoring, the Habs have little chance of outplaying the Canes from a territorial perspective, but strong play from a hot goalie like Jakub Dobes, a lethal power play and a strong counter-attack are factors that have given Carolina trouble in past playoff defeats.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by former NHL video coach Steve Peters to discuss the aspects of Montreal’s game that can give the Hurricanes trouble throughout the series.
Tyler Yaremchuk: So some people will look at that Buffalo series and kind of say like, ‘Hey, Montreal got the goal tending, but they got outplayed towards the end of it. The puck luck, the bounces kind of went their way.’ I think it’s too simple to just point to a series and say, puck luck and goal tending is why they moved on. So what has Montreal been doing well in these playoffs, and what are they gonna have to do well if they want to try to push this Carolina team deep?
Steve Peters: Yeah, I think you hit part of it. Dobes clearly is a big difference in this series. He’s a big part of why they’re winning, but the goalie is part of a team. So I think we have to recognize that Dobes has to be great. He can’t have a roller coaster type game like he did late in this series, not in Game 7, but in Game 6, where he’s kind of up-and-down. He can’t have those games. He can’t have a soft goal against the Carolina Hurricanes. For Montreal, their advantage is their speed. Like they’re young, they’re fast, they can get secondary scoring from this team. They get through the neutral zone incredibly quick, and you’re gonna see those foot races that I talked about in Colorado. You’re gonna see those in Montreal. Montreal has got to get the puck to the weak side, because you gotta get away from all of that pressure. So when you’re trying to get out of your zone, it’s hard rims. Get it past that layer, and let’s have those races in the neutral zone. Because if Montreal can win that odd-man rush battle and get more odd-man rushes than Carolina, they actually have a chance to generate some offense. The other one is their power play. When Montreal’s power play is on, they are deadly. And they are so good with having so many options. Demidov on the back door with his one-timer. You’ve got the low plays with Suzuki and Caufield, and then you’ve got, Hutson up on the back end. So they have so many threats if they can get opportunities on the power play and capitalize on them. They’ve got to score because Carolina’s got the best penalty kill left in the playoffs. So I think those are the two areas if Montreal can generate offense through the neutral and on the power play, these aren’t gonna be 8-6 games. It’s not 6-5. These are 2-1. These are 3-2 games. This is going to be a much tighter game than what we’ve seen between Montreal and Buffalo.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…