Montreal Canadiens 5-2 Florida ‘Olli Jokinen leads our franchise scoring chart with 419 pts!’ Panthers
TopShelf’s completely Professional GameReport:
Maxim Lapierre’s hattrick propelled the Montreal Canadiens past the Florida Panthers by a score of 5-2 on Monday night at the BankAtlantic Center.
The Canadiens were seeking their second win in a row, after earning a hard-fought but deserved victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins two nights prior.
They got off to a good start, spending the first two minutes of the game applying pressure in the Panthers zone, but they couldn’t take advantage of their opportunities and Peter DeBoer’s men made them pay.
A seemingly harmless play ended by Michael Frolik taking a slapshot towards the Habs’ net, and Carey Price didn’t look like a number one goaltender letting the puck trickle under his pads to give Florida an early 1-0 lead.
Five minutes later though, Montreal continued their climb up the powerplay ranking by banking on a 5 on 3 opportunity. Alex Kovalev tried to pass the puck to an open Alex Tanguay in the crease, but it went off of a Florida defenseman’s skate and past Craig Anderson to put the teams level.
Florida then got a golden chance at the beginning of the middle period to flex their powerplay muscles, but it was the Canadiens instead who showed off their prowess with a man down.
Tomas Plekanec jumped on Roman Hamrlik’s clearance and went in 1 on 1 on Anderson and had no trouble beating the Florida netminder with a sweet wristshot to put his team a goal up.
A bit more than 5 minutes later though, Florida leveled the score. David Booth took advantage of Sergei Kostitsyn’s weak play in the Habs zone and took a shot that surprised Price and tied the game.
Ten minutes later, cue the Maxim Lapierre show. He first surprised Anderson with a wraparound to give his team the lead, Steve Begin (who had gotten into a fight with Anthony Stewart earlier) and Tom Kostopoulos assisted on the St Leonard native’s 5th of the season.
The third period was barely 2 minutes old when Lapierre struck once again. Following pressure in the Canadiens zone by the Panthers, Guillaume Latendresse blocked a shot at the blue line and then skated into the Florida zone, he then dropped a pass back to the trailing Lapierre who beat Anderson with a slap shot to the top corner.
Montreal head coach Guy Carbonneau then gave his young centreman every opportunity he could for him to get his hattrick, including giving him powerplay minutes and playing him when Florida pulled Vokoun, who had come in to replace Anderson.
The move bore fruit for Carbonneau when Lapierre chased down Bryan McCabe behind the empty Panthers net and managed to steal the puck away and skate in and score his 3rd of the night to hand the Habs a fully deserved 5-2 victory.
TopShelf’s notes o’ da day:
-That’s some good medicine Andrei and Lapierre have been taking. They must be going to the same stripclub or something.
-Bryan McCabe – Sucky in Toronto, equally Sucky in Florida! Isn’t that beautiful?
-3000th win! YEAH! Next in line is the Bahston Brouweens with 2696, a 304 Win deficit. Must be all those years of suckage.
-Judge Karen is sexy. That hair, MM-HMMM!
-Awesome Kovy, Turtleneck, Dirty Harry Sr seem to be back. Carey’s healthy again. We just need Saku and Yale to come back and for Boston to go on a 159 game losing streak and everything will be good again.
-Oh Tomas Plekanec, when you skate like a the Pleks from last year, I go koko for Pleks and get really happy that Pleks score goal shorthanded topshelf on sucky Craig Anderson. GO PLEKS GO!
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