Montreal Canadiens will try to put a playoff point again when they visit Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night.
Canadiens (39-31-9, 87 points) won the chance to reach after the season by winning on Friday, but they lost 5-2 to the host Ottawa senators to end the best six-game winning line of the season.
Maple Leafs (48-26-4, 100 points) have its own incentives. In the Atlantic Department, they are on Tampa Bay Lightning on two points and fourths on four Florida Panthers.
Toronto is leading the season series against Montreal 2-1-0. Canadiens, a leading six-point on the columbus blue jackets in the chase of the second and last joker card at the Eastern Conference, will try to overcome the slow onset that left them 2-0 behind on Friday.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said, “Can’t we break a break in the first period? We couldn’t do that.” He said. “Fortunately, I felt that we stopped bleeding at 2-0. I just wanted to go down 2-0 from that period. But some nights, a very big hole.”
“It’s not the beginning we’re looking for,” Cole Caufield, who helped Montreal, said. “Returning is always hard. I thought we showed a little fight, but you have to start better. We should turn our beginnings and start on time. We can’t always come back. We should look in the mirror and face it.”
“This happens,” Montreal defender Kaiden said, “This happens.” “Eighty -two games. You can pass through nights. Today I wasn’t almost good enough for the team.”
“We knew it wouldn’t be easy.” He said. “Absolutely we didn’t do good for ourselves. Obviously it was a difficult start to the game. Not good enough. They did a good job to make us difficult and we did a very bad job to break their pressure. We should wash it quite quickly.”
A live start, for Canadiens on Saturday, a player can be useful to put pressure on Maple Leafs, which will be short.
Defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larson will play with five defensive and 12-speed.
“He went out,” said coach Craig Berube. “Maybe I’ll follow there and play, but yes, five defenders.”
Maple Leafs, this week, Florida’ya 1-1 -0 journey to the wounded defendant Jake McCabe and Center David Kampf, where they lost 3-1 to Panthers on Tuesday and won 4-3 during over Wednesday.
On Saturday, a Toronto victory would take Maple Leafs in a way that Florida could not reach in the race under the leadership of the department.
On Wednesday, Ekman-Tarson suffered a injury that was not announced during the match. He did not participate in the application on Friday and was listed daily.
“We’ve always played a game with a defender who’s injured at the beginning of the game, and you’re playing five.” He said. “It is important that our Forwards do a good job to help us defense tomorrow night and to make sure they return quickly for breaks and such things, making the game easier as possible.
He continued: “In the D region, not to buy expanded shifts and tire your defense, this game will be a big part of the game.”
-FELD level media
