The Similarities. When Montreal started to lose Julien would stray from his line-up and shuffle the lines, which most often included benching the 4th line. Tonight Gainey went to 3 lines after the 1st period, which was baffling considering the Canadiens won the 1st period on the back of rolling those four lines. Gainey fired Julien in favour of Theodore who has continued his putrid play to earn him some more rest at the end of the bench. Gainey in his press conference when he relinquished the Canadiens of Julien control told the media he would stress team speed moving away from a defensive system. While this has been true sparingly throughout his tenure for the most part Gainey is at least as defensive minded if not more so than Julien. Game Recap. The Canadiens started off well with Huet making big save after big save including a penalty shot stop on P.J. Axelsson, thus giving momentum to the Canadiens bench. With less then five minutes left in the first period, Souray sprung Plekanec between the Bruins defence and he launched the puck into the top corner of the net providing his teammates with an early lead. What crushed the Canadiens momentum was their performance on the power play. Montreal had its first power play half way through the first period and their second and last of the evening at the end of the first period which extended into the beginning of the second period. On these two opportunities the Canadiens were awful to say the least. The Bruins created more scoring chances while short handed than the Habs could complete passes. The second period was a period of mysteries the Canadiens were given three questionable penalties which Boston scored twice on. But even more strangely one Bruins goal was called back because the neutral zone referee claimed that Sturm batted the puck down with a high stick before firing it into the open cage. And finally the most odd portion of the period was yet another “goal” the Canadiens received a break on when the Bruins fired a puck over Huet’s shoulder which hit the inside crossbar and came right out and was immediately waived off and not reviewed by the officials or questions by the Bruins players or bench. With these breaks going the Canadiens way luckily heading into the third period only down by a single goal one might think they would come out flying, but they continued to disappoint managing only five shots in the final frame. It was yet another game where most of the players did not show up.
The Canadiens lost for the sixth time in eight games and lost their eighteenth of their last twenty-one. When Gainey fired Julien the Canadiens faithful believed that changes were coming and this team would regain its early season form, Oh contraire, the Canadiens are the worst they have been all year.