Game Preview: Montreal Canadiens @ Pittsburgh Penguins 11/2/2024

The Penguins will hope to celebrate Kris Letang’s 1,100th NHL game with a second straight victory.

Who: Montreal Canadiens (4-6-1, 9 points) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (4-7-1, 9 points)

When: 7:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: NHL Network, SportsNet Pittsburgh, CITY, SNE, TVAS

Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens have tough stretch ahead of them next week as they hit the road for three division games, starting with a Tuesday night contest against the New York Islanders and followed on Thursday by the first game in a back-to-back set against the Carolina Hurricanes and Washington Capitals.

Opponent Track: The Canadiens are coming out of two straight blowout losses to the Seattle Kraken and Washington Capitals in which they were outscored by a total of 14-5.

Season Series: In typical 2024-25 fashion, the Penguins lost a 2-0 lead to the Canadiens during these teams’ last matchup on Oct. 14. In not-so-typical 2024-25 fashion, the Pens came back to claim a 6-3 win in Montreal.

Hidden Stat: Heading into Friday the Penguins had allowed an NHL-high 48 goals against. The Canadiens tied with the Colorado Avalanche and San Jose Sharks for the honor of second place in the category with 46.

Getting to know the Canadiens

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Cole Caufield - Nick Suzuki - Emil Heineman

Alex Newhook - Kirby Dach - Juraj Slafkovsky

Josh Anderson - Jake Evans - Brendan Gallagher

Joel Armia - Christian Dvorak - Oliver Kapanen

DEFENSEMEN

Mike Matheson - Kaiden Guhle

Lane Hutson - David Savard

Jayden Struble - Justin Barron

Goalies: Samuel Montembeault and Cayden Primeau

IR: Rafael Harvey-Pinard, David Reinbacher, Patrik Laine

• Former Penguin check-in: Mike Matheson is skating on the Canadiens’ first pairing. As of Friday he had recorded a league-high 25 penalty minutes while putting up nine assists through 11 games.
• Two highlights of this roster are Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson. Caufield is tied for the NHL goalscoring lead as of Friday with 10 goals in 11 games:

Hutson has meanwhile gotten off to a strong start to his rookie season by continually providing the Canadiens with breakout opportunities:

Player stats

(via hockeydb)

Sam Montembeault made 48 saves in his season-opening shutout of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’s all been downhill from there for the Canadiens defense and goaltending.

Montembeault, who now holds a .891 save percentage on the season, was pulled after allowing four goals in less under 11 minutes during Tuesday’s 8-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken.

His defense wasn’t doing much to help him out:

Cayden Primeau started and played behind a similar lack of defensive structure in Thursday’s 6-3 loss to the Capitals:

It’s safe to say head coach Martin St. Louis wasn’t thrilled with how his team looked in their last two losses.

St. Louis spoke about the Canadiens’ struggles to reporters after Friday’s practice, per The Athletic’s Arpon Basu:

“Defensively, we have habits and a mindset that lacks urgency. And what creates that urgency, to me, is always a deadline. You start a season, you have 80-something games, the deadline seems far away. We need to understand the deadline is close. The exam is our next game, so you have to do your homework. You can’t procrastinate and hope to succeed if you lack that urgency.”

From winger Josh Anderson:

“We’ve had a lot of conversations in the last week, and that’s to be expected. I hope everybody in here’s received the message and we see a different team in Pittsburgh.”

And now for the Pens

Infographic courtesy of Pittsburgh Penguins PR

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Evgeni Malkin - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell

Drew O’Connor - Lars Eller - Valtteri Puustinen

Michael Bunting - Cody Glass - Noel Acciari

Kevin Hayes - Blake Lizotte - Anthony Beauvillier

DEFENSEMEN

Matt Grzelcyk / Kris Letang

Marcus Pettersson / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Graves / Jack St. Ivany

Goalies: Alex Nedeljkovic, Joel Blomqvist

Potential Scratches: Ryan Shea, Jesse Puljujarvi

IR: Matt Nieto (knee surgery), Blake Lizotte, Vasily Ponomarev, Bryan Rust (week-to-week lower body injury)

• Evgeni Malkin missed Friday’s practice for a maintenance day, head coach Mike Sullivan said.
• Kris Letang is skating in his 1,100th NHL game tonight. He told NHL.com’s Wes Crosby that “there were times where I didn’t even think I was going to crack 500.”

Letang, who has suffered two strokes and underwent neck surgery during his 19-season Penguins career, added:

“That’s the most important. I realize that you only have one health, you can’t really gamble that. The fact that I’m comfortable and I’m healthy now, that I can do the things I love but I can also be active and do all kinds of things with them on the ice, I think it’s pretty special.”