{"id":66736,"date":"2025-12-21T11:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T11:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/66736\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T11:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T11:35:10","slug":"game-preview-montreal-canadiens-pittsburgh-penguins-12-21-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/66736\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Preview: Montreal Canadiens @ Pittsburgh Penguins 12\/21\/25"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who: Montreal Canadiens (19-12-4, 42 points, 2nd place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (14-11-9, 37 points, 5th place Metropolitan Division)<\/p>\n

How to Watch: Broadcast locally Sportsnet Pittsburgh, streaming on ESPN+<\/p>\n

Pens\u2019 Path Ahead: The Pens go right back to Canada for a game on Tuesday night against the Maple Leafs before making it to their December 24-27 holiday break. Can\u2019t come soon enough!<\/p>\n

Opponent Track: Montreal came into the December 11th game against the Pens at perhaps a season rock bottom following a 6-1 drubbing to Tampa. The Habs 4-1-1 since that moment (including two wins against Pittsburgh) for a nice little turnaround.<\/p>\n

Season Series: Tonight will be the last of the meetings between the Pens and Canadiens this year, and not a moment too soon for the Pens with the way things have gone so far after Montreal defeated them 4-2 on Dec 11th and 4-0 last night.<\/p>\n

Getting to know the Canadiens<\/p>\n

Cole Caufield – Nick Suzuki – Zack Bolduc<\/p>\n

Juraj Slafkovsky – Oliver Kapanen – Ivan Demidov<\/p>\n

Alexandre Texier – Jake Evans – Josh Anderson<\/p>\n

Joe Veleno – Owen Beck – Brendan Gallagher<\/p>\n

Mike Matheson \/ Noah Dobson<\/p>\n

Lane Hutson \/ Alexandre Carrier<\/p>\n

Arber Xhekaj \/ Adam Engstrom<\/p>\n

Goalies: Jakub Dobes and Jacob Fowler<\/p>\n

Potential scratches: Jayden Struble, Philip Danault (?)<\/p>\n

Injured Reserve: Kaiden Guhle, Patrik Laine, Alex Newhook, Kirby Dach<\/p>\n

Danault didn\u2019t play last night after his recent trade back to the Habs, we\u2019ll have to see if he\u2019s available to make his re-debut with Montreal tonight.\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s nice to see a team a few times within 10 days to learn more about them. Fowler definitely looks like he will live up to the hype (though as pointed out in the recap, so far he\u2019s had two great outings against the Pens and then not been sharp in his other starts. Annoying!). Suzuki and Caufield are masters. Slafkovsky has impressed scoring a goal in both MTL\/PIT games.Demidov has been good in his rookie season, but was very quiet last night. No shot attempts in only 14:21 of ice time during a comfortable win. It\u2019ll be interesting to see what kind of rookie wall he hits, if one at all.Montreal adding Danault back in a trade, for the cost of only a second round pick, looks like a great move for them to make. Danault\u2019s point production can be hit or miss but he is a very reliable checking center and good away from the puck. The Canadiens have enough firepower and guys who can take care of the offense, they could use a player with Danault\u2019s skillset to boost them down the middle.<\/p>\n

Tommy Novak – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust<\/p>\n

Anthony Mantha – Rickard Rakell – Justin Brazeau<\/p>\n

Ville Koivunen – Ben Kindel – Rutger McGroarty<\/p>\n

Connor Dewar – Kevin Hayes – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n

Parker Wotherspoon \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n

Brett Kulak \/ Kris Letang<\/p>\n

Ryan Shea \/ Connor Clifton<\/p>\n

Goalies: Stuart Skinner and Arturs Silovs<\/p>\n

Potential Scratches: Danton Heinen, Ryan Graves, Jack St. Ivany<\/p>\n

IR: Blake Lizotte, Evgeni Malkin, Filip Hallander, Caleb Jones<\/p>\n

Dan Muse surely had some time to think on the way home last night from Montreal about how his changes (reflected above) worked out. In one sense, it wasn\u2019t the absolute worst. They generated 3.6 expected goals according to MoneyPuck and were stymied by Fowler. That doesn\u2019t put any actual goals on the board but could be some evidence to support giving the changes a little more time to see if they can figure it out before shaking it up again.Presumably will be Silovs in net tonight, he like the Pens could use a slump buster. Silovs is 0-3-4 in his last seven decisions and hasn\u2019t notched a victory since November 6th against Washington. Maybe he and the team are due for something good to happen? That hope is about all you can hang your hat on right now since all the recent evidence is not very encouraging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who: Montreal Canadiens (19-12-4, 42 points, 2nd place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (14-11-9, 37 points, 5th place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3264,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-66736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-game-preview","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}