The Montreal Canadiens will try again to clinch a playoff spot when they visit the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night.
The Canadiens (39-31-9, 87 points) had a chance to reach the postseason by winning on Friday, but they lost 5-2 to the host Ottawa Senators to end their season-best, six-game winning streak.
The Maple Leafs (48-26-4, 100 points) have their own incentive. They hold first place in the Atlantic Division by two points over the Tampa Bay Lightning and four over the Florida Panthers.
Toronto leads the season series against Montreal 2-1-0. The Canadiens, who have a six-point lead over the Columbus Blue Jackets in the chase for the second and final wild-card berth in the Eastern Conference, will try to overcome the slow start that put them behind 2-0 at 4:18 of the first period on Friday.
“Can we bend not break in the first period? We haven’t been able to do that,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “Fortunately, I felt like we stopped the bleeding at 2-0. I just wanted to get out of that period down 2-0. But some nights, it’s just too big of a hole.”
“Not the start we were looking for,” said Cole Caufield, who had an assist for Montreal. “It’s always tough to come back. I thought we showed some fight, but you’ve got to start better. We have to dial-in our starts and start on time. We can’t always come back all the time. We have to look in the mirror and face it head-on.”
“It happens,” Montreal defenseman Kaiden Guhle said. ” Eighty-two games. You can have off nights. I wasn’t nearly good enough for the team today.”
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson said. “We definitely didn’t do ourselves any favors. It was a tough start to the game, obviously. Just not good enough. They did a good job of making it hard on us, and we did a pretty bad job of breaking their pressure. We have to flush this one pretty quick..”
A lively start could be useful for the Canadiens on Saturday to put pressure on the Maple Leafs, who will be short a player.
With defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson out, Toronto will play with five defensemen and 12 forwards.
“He’s out,” coach Craig Berube said. “Maybe I’ll suit up and play back there, but, yeah, five defensemen.”
The Maple Leafs also will be without injured defenseman Jake McCabe and center David Kampf, who also missed the team’s 1-1-0 road trip this week to Florida, where they lost 3-1 to the Panthers on Tuesday and won 4-3 in overtime Wednesday vs. Tampa Bay.
A Toronto win on Saturday would put the Maple Leafs out of Florida’s reach in the race for the division lead.
Ekman-Larsson suffered an undisclosed injury during the game on Wednesday. He did not participate in practice on Friday and is listed as day-to-day.
“It’s always challenging, but we’ve played games with a defenseman injured early in the game and you play with five,” Berube said. “It’s important that our forwards do a good job of helping our defense out tomorrow night and making sure that they get back quick for breakouts and things like that, make the game easy on them as much as possible.
“Not getting extended shifts in the D zone and tiring your defense out, that will be a big part of the game.”
–Field Level Media
