The Montreal Canadiens will be playing the second-part of their season opening back-to-back today at the TD Garden as the Boston Bruins will host them for their home opener.
After taking on age-old rivals for the home opener in Montreal last night, the Canadiens made the quick trip to Boston to open the Bruins' home season as well. The big bad Bruins looked more like little cubs in the first two periods of their first game against the Florida Panthers on Monday night. They did come out of hibernation in the second half of the game, but they still dropped a 6-4 decision.
Coach Jim Montgomery wasn't pleased with his team's effort against the Stanley Cup champs, and he wasn't afraid to say so to the media:
Their execution was really good. Our execution was really poor. I can’t pinpoint why we looked slow, but we looked slow the entire game. Not just the first 10 minutes, in my opinion.
Meanwhile, the Canadiens played a hotly contested game against the Maple Leafs last night. Even though Martin St-Louis' men allowed 47 shots on net, no one of them got past Samuel Montembeault. Well, none that found the back of the net anyway, but Toronto did get the post or crossbar three times. As they say, though, you've got to be lucky to be good and good to be lucky.
Tonight, Cayden Primeau will make his season debut, taking on newly signed Jeremy Swayman, who did not get into any preseason action as his contract negotiations dragged on. Emil Heineman will come out of the lineup to make way for Oliver Kapanen, who will make his NHL debut.
Just like against Toronto, Juraj Slafkovsky has four points in four career games against the Boston Bruins, but Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield haven't had as much success, 9 in 15 for the captain and two in seven for the sniper. Now would be as good a time as any to remediate that. The team's scorer against Boston is Brendan Gallagher, who scored 26 points in 40 games, while Mike Matheson led in penalties with 47 minutes in 32 games.
Interestingly, Kirby Dach has a 42.9% shooting rate against Swayman, with three goals in three games coming from seven shots. This game will be the 762nd between the two sides, and the Habs have the edge with a 364-282-103-12 record, but the Bruins have won the last three games and nine of the last ten. The boys have got their work cut out for them.