It was hockey night in Canada on Saturday! The red hot New York Islanders traveled to Montreal after blasting the Pittsburgh Penguins for a tilt against the Canadiens. Montreal was in a little bit of a tailspin entering the game with only one win in their last four games. To make matters worse the Canadiens started Dustin Tokarski over Carey Price due to a upper body injury. Ironically, it was Price's injury that paved the way for Jaroslav Halak to make the all star team.
In addition, P.A. Parenteau, the former Islander was also out with an illness (officially not characterized as an upper or lower body injury). No worries. P.A. had a prime seat in the skybox for the game where I am sure he dreamt about all the points he would have had on the wing of John Tavares and Kyle "Hat + 1" Okposo. Can't blame him. When he bolted the Islanders a couple of years ago he was looking for a big pay day and he got it from Colorado before he being subsequently traded to Montreal. The Islanders had bigger and better plans.
The official name of the Montreal Canadiens is "le Club de hockey Canadien", but the team is also widely known as "Les Habitants" or "The Habs". By the way, what is a Hab anyway? I always wanted to know. So I decided to go to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, and discovered that "Les Habitants refers to French settlers and the inhabitants of French origin who farmed the land along the two shores of the St. Lawrence Gulf and River in what is the present-day Province of Quebec in Canada. The term was used by the inhabitants themselves and the other classes of French Canadian society from the 17th century up until the early 20th century." Now armed with that important piece of useless knowledge it made perfect sense to start referring to the team from Montreal as the "Farmers." That seemed a bit more appropriate term for French settlers that played with hockey sticks.
The Islanders went with what was working which is the same line-up. Halak got the start for a number of reasons. First, coming into the game he had not faced a lot of shots in beating both the Rangers and Penguins. Second, playing him in Montreal meant that the Islanders could start Chad Johnson for the Monday MLK matinee against the Philadelphia Flyers. That will give Halak some rest going into the All-Star game. Third, the Canadiens historically have not been able to score on him. Halak is 4-0 in his career with a 0.98 GAA and .960 Save Percentage vs. Montreal. Fourth, Halak likes to take it to the Canadiens because they gave up on him and traded him away in 2010. You had to like the Islanders chances against a tough Montreal team.
The game started with a bang. Just 54 seconds into the first period Ryan Stome was called for tripping and that turned into a quick 1-0 lead for the Farmers. John Tavares' good friend Farmer Subban blistered a one-timer past Halak who was screened in front of the net. The key for the Islanders penalty kill seems to be to not commit penalties. If you don't sit in the sin bin then you don't have to kill penalties. Easier said than done.
The Islanders had their own power play during the period but it went nowhere as usual. I find it hard to believe that the Isles power play is ranked 14th in the league because it seems like they never score. Special teams is something that needs to get better before the end of the year or it will come back to bite the Islanders in the playoffs. That's right I said it on January 17th... I officially declared the Islanders are already in the playoffs. In the first period New York created a lot of chances five on five. However, there were mot a lot of shots in the first as both teams were in the single digits. The Islanders were positioned for a big second period.
The Farmers plowed the field early in the second period when Farmer Weise scored to make it 2-0 off a quick rush off of the face off. The goal came at the ten second mark and was the second time within the last week that the Islanders gave up a quick goal at the start of a period. New York found themselves in the same position as Friday night down two goals. However, that changed at around the 11 minute mark when Kyle Okposo (who was told before the game that he was really playing this game in Pittsburgh) took a pass from Tavares in the slot and went over Farmer Tokarski's glove and underneath the bar to cut the lead in half. For the Penguin-killer it was his 5th goal in less than 24 hours and his 14th goal of the year. Tavares and Josh "I am just content with assists" Bailey got the helpers.
Thomas "Fish Oils" Hickey then proceeded to take down a Farmhand who had a breakaway. Might as well have just added the goal to the scoreboard at that point as right off the faceoff, Farmer Plekanec one-timed it for a 3-1 lead. It looked like that would be the score going into the last period, but a long pass from Bailey to Brock Nelson started a breakaway way down field. Nelson got bottled up with two defenders, absorbed contact and somehow dropped a pass back to Nickolay Kulemin who put one past Farmer Tokarski to make it a one goal game again. Halak played well and made some big saves to keep the Islanders in the game. Even though he had given up three goals to the Farmers he had been solid through the first 40 minutes with 20 saves (which is approximately the amount of shots he has been facing for an entire game over the past couple of weeks).
Onto the third period and another quick goal. What is it with Farmers trying to get their work done early? It only took Farmer Galchenyuk 52 seconds after a broken play to get a shot by Halak to make it 4-2. It was the third two goal deficit of the game. But in this case the third time did not turn out to be the charm. Farmer Desharnais picked off a pass, skated into the New York zone and got one over Halak's shoulder to make in 5-2. Then a couple of minutes later Farmer Plekanec got off his tractor and made it 6-2 with a little over six minutes left in the game. At that point Halak ran back to the barn and Chad Johnson came in to finish the period.
As I was looking down typing away Anders Lee got his 12th goal of the year from Strome to cut the lead in half at 6-3. Then just to make things interesting the Farmers got called for over feeding their livestock and had to send one of their own into the pig pen. The Islanders took advantage and scored on the ensuing power play as Tavares netted his 20th to make it 6-4 with a couple of minutes left. However, there was no comeback on this evening. A late penalty by Frans Nielsen after the Islanders pulled their goalie ended the game. The Farmers settled in for the win. It was the first time in a long while that the Islanders were out shot as the Farmers took 34 shots to the Islanders 31.
The other night the question was could the Islanders win every game and the obvious answer was no. This won was a sloppy game by a tired team. They are entitled to a bad game here and there. The Islanders "fell" to 30-24-1 and remained at the top of the Metropolitan Division with 61 points and "fell" to a point behind Tampa Bay for the Eastern Conference lead (with a couple of games in hand). Monday it is back home at the Nassau Coliseum to take on the Flyers. Will Johnson play or will the Islanders go back to Halak one more time? My money is on Johnson simply due to the fact that Halak faced more shots than normal tonight.
You can't win them all. The Farmers were the better team tonight. They planted six goals and reaped the benefit of a win against one of the best teams in the league.
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