The Montreal Canadiens stole home ice advantage away from the Pittsburgh Penguins with a 3-1 victory this afternoon. The Canadiens will now return home for the next two games with the series knotted at 1. Mike Cammalleri scored a pair of goals to pace the Canadiens while Brian Gionta scored the other goal. The Pens struck early, scoring just 4:38 in, but were unable to get anything else past Jaroslav Halak the rest of the game. Halak rebounded nicely from Friday's game, making 38 saves. Marc Andre Fleury took the loss for the Pens making 18 saves. The Habs penalty kill that was such a huge factor in the opening round made up for it's bad performance in game 1 by going a perfect 3 for 3 on the night. The power play went 1 for 3, with the final power play coming in the final few minutes after the Pens Craig Adams threw a vicious hit from behind on MA Bergeron. He was assesed a 5 minute major for the dangerous hit. In a classic example of the double standard in the NHL, the Pens Sidney Crosby two handed the Canadiens post, breaking his stick before wildly throwing in against the boards...all this while the play was going on. Of course, no penalty was assesed on the play because apparently that is legal to do now and the Habs had the next 3 calls go against them after the tantrum. Some other thoughts after a big win:>Martin made some lineup changes today, sitting Metropoit and moving Bergeron back to defence to replace Markov. Their replacements were Darche and Maxwell who playe 0:54 and 1:03 respectively and were -1. Not sure why he wouldn't just leave Metro in the lineup considering his experience.
>The Habs also had to make some adjustments on the back end, playing Hamrlik and Subban along with Bergeron and O'Byrne. I'm not going to lie, there were a couple of scary shift with O'Byrne and Bergeron, more specificially the one with the 4th line that led to the Pens goal.
>The Canadiens played a pretty passive game, looking satisfied to sit back with the 1 goal lead. That strategy worked but was a little nerve racking. Nice to see Cammi put another by Fleury late to make the finish a little less stressful.
The Montreal Canadiens continue to defy the experts who predicted another domination by the opposition. The Canadiens rode Halak again and he responded in a big way. Now it's time to take advantage of home ice at the Bell Centre, which I'm sure will be electric. The Silver Wolf Whiskey Hab of the Game goes to Mike Cammalleri. Cammi scored the game winner and the insurance marker. This honor certainly could have gone to Halak and consideration also given to Hamrlik. Next game goes Tuesday in Montreal.
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