Well, we finally get to witness the long anticipated debut of Doug Janik, the heavily touted prospect who was a key cog in the Steve Begin mega deal. Haha. Seriously though, hopefully he steps in and we don’t hear his name once during the course of the entire broadcast. That will mean he did his job and didn’t mess anything up.

I’ve mentioned a couple times this year how terrible it would be for the Canadiens to lose Markov, but I never imagined he would be hurt at the same time as Schneider. What a terrible time for Montreal to lose two players who log over 20 minutes of ice time each. Clearly everyone on the blue line will need to step up in the absence of Markov and Schneider. O’Byrne and Janik need to play a simple and low risk game.

Gainey has made an interesting move in bringing up Janik instead of one of the more offensive minded Bulldogs given the hole that will be left in the powerplay. Clearly he feels that Brisebois, Hamrlik and Gorges can pick up the slack on the back end of the PP. We may even see Komisarek out there, given that he has a pretty hard slapshot (even if it does end up hitting the player directly in front of him 90% of the time). The Habs will need to rely on the hard work of the forewards to carry the slack on the man advantage which is not necessarily a bad idea given that Koivu, Tanguay and Kovalev have an insane number of points in their last 5 games.

Ottawa can be a dangerous team, but if we are careful on D and continue to get great work by all of the forward lines, we should still pick up the points.

Very true Joseph. I suspect the PP will run from Kovalev at the side of the net for either a cross crease pass or a pass into the slot. the second option if those plays aren’t available will be a blast from the point. My only hope is that we don’t see Breezer try one of his blind D to D passes that seem to be intercepted by the high defender every time. Again, less is more from anyone in a role they are not accustomed to. Do no harm.