Kovalev: Damned If He Does, Damned If He Doesn’t!

Once again we played at our opposition’s level. As Jacques mentioned in between periods, Carbonneau and Muller were not that type of players, and are not the type of persons who show up on some nights and not on others. This team still has a way to go to establish our selves as a power house in the NHL. If we cannot play the same high tempo, solid defensive game we play every night regardless of opposition, fatigue or locker room antics, we cannot be a dominant force in the NHL.

With that said, notch two more for MN. Even though Aebi let in the weakest goal of, quite possible the season, we took it without it coming down to the wire, and that is good enough for me. It was good to see Ryder continue with his re-found rhythm, and Lapierre seemd to do OK on his debut with the second line.

Speaking of the second line…what about that guy…they call the Russian rifle…He has had his fair share of criticism this year, and continues to attract all sorts of negative on-ice publicity. We are quick to judge him when he has a negative impact on the team (nice clean pass to Gagne on the blue line during the HABS power play for an “almost” breakaway), but he doesn’t get nearly enough credit that he is due.

During the second period, Philly clearly dominated us from the start. In fact half way through there was a period of 4-5 minutes where we were just in our zone, resembling a penalty-kill…except with five skaters…they were pressing so hard we even iced the puck 2-3 times out of desperation and were lucky to come out of that without getting scored on. Kovalev is the man who changed the momentum of the game which led to the winning goals. It happened when he crashed the net with Lapierre. He saw Lapierre going to the net and deked to the inside, not to score (there was no angle left and Nittymaki was already on the ground) but by doing it he forced the defenseman to cross check him into his own goalie…Lapierre also got cross checked, and this lead to Nittymaki getting shaken up, the Philly bench getting riled up and distracted away from the dominance in the Canadiens zone, and the cherry on the top was the cross check on Lapierre being called. That was the turning point and this is why in my humble opinion, Kovalev is a key impact player in our line-up, even if he doesn’t contribute to the score-board.