Game 61: Montreal Canadiens @ Anaheim Ducks<\/p>\n
Start time:\u00a0**9:00 PM EST \/ 6:00 PM PST**
In the Canadiens region: TSN2 (English), RDS (French)
In the Ducks region: K-COP13, Victory+
Streaming: ESPN+, RDS, TSN+<\/p>\n
The Anaheim Ducks pulled off a big midnight surprise on Friday by acquiring John Carlson from the Washington Capitals, securing one of the faces of the Capitals franchise even though Washington is still in the wild-card race in the Eastern Conference. He may be 36 and no longer in his prime, but Carlson left the Caps as their assist leader this season.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Montreal, he won\u2019t be in tonight\u2019s game, so no improvements have been made over what the Ducks approached the deadline with. That was still pretty good, however, and the Ducks are showing that they are a quality team filled with offensive talent. They\u2019re now set to battle for the Pacific Division crown with the Vegas Golden Knights, even if they do have four fewer points than the Habs.<\/p>\n
Montreal didn\u2019t make such an addition to its lineup. For the second consecutive year, the roster remained the same through the deadline, though this year that wasn\u2019t for a lack of trying. Kent Hughes hinted that he made a lot of progress on a significant trade that he plans to revisit in the summer, but Montreal is going to have to see out this season with what they have.<\/p>\n
What they have tonight is Arber Xhekaj back in the lineup, and Martin St-Louis will need to make sure the three players he\u2019s using on the bottom pairing are playing as well as possible because that\u2019s what he has at his disposal until the end of the season. He\u2019s leaned heavily on his top four, but with the schedule compressing for the final portion of the season, ice times will need to be spread more evenly to prevent the burnout the Habs carried into last year\u2019s playoffs. This weekend alone there are two starts in less than 24 hours, so the coach needs accept that he has to use all of his players effectively, and it\u2019s also up to all of Xhekaj, Jayden Struble, and Alexandre Carrier to prove that they can take some minutes from the core options.<\/p>\n
Montreal Canadiens projected lineup<\/p>\n
Left Wing
\n Centre
\n Right Wing<\/p>\n
#13 Cole Caufield
\n #14 Nick Suzuki
\n #20 Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd<\/p>\n
#15 Alex Newhook
\n #91 Oliver Kapanen
\n #93 Ivan Demidov<\/p>\n
#76 Zachary Bolduc
\n #71 Jake Evans
\n #77 Kirby Dach<\/p>\n
#17 Josh Anderson
\n #24 Phillip Danault
\n #11 Brendan Gallagher<\/p>\n
Left Defence
\n Right Defence<\/p>\n
#8 Mike Matheson
\n #21 Kaiden Guhle<\/p>\n
#48 Lane Hutson
\n #53 Noah Dobson<\/p>\n
#72 Arber Xhekaj
\n #45 Alexandre Carrier<\/p>\n
Starter
\n Backup<\/p>\n
#35 Samuel Montembeault
\n #75 Jakub Dobe\u0161<\/p>\n
Scratched: Jayden Struble, Alexandre Texier, Joe Veleno
Injured: Patrik Laine<\/p>\n
Anaheim Ducks projected lineup<\/p>\n
Left Wing
\n Centre
\n Right Wing<\/p>\n
Chris Kreider
\n Leo Carlsson
\n Cutter Gauthier<\/p>\n
Alex Killorn
\n Mason McTavish
\n Beckett Sennecke<\/p>\n
Frank Vatrano
\n Ryan Poehling
\n Jansen Harkins<\/p>\n
Ross Johnston
\n Tim Washe
\n Jeffrey Viel<\/p>\n
Left Defence
\n Right Defence<\/p>\n
Jackson LaCombe
\n Jacob Trouba<\/p>\n
Olen Zellweger
\n Radko Gudas<\/p>\n
Pavel Mintyukov
\n Ian Moore<\/p>\n
Starter
\n Backup<\/p>\n
Lukas Dostal
\n Ville Husso<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Game 61: Montreal Canadiens @ Anaheim Ducks Start time:\u00a0**9:00 PM EST \/ 6:00 PM PST**In the Canadiens region:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-208393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}