Ottawa vs Montreal - Playoff Series Talk

How the Sens matchup against the Habs will be all the rage on all the talk shows, so why not try to break it down early from a forum that knows what they're talking about.

1. Forwards:

Montreal:

Pacioretty
Plekanec
Eller
Ryder
Gallagher
Galchenyuk
Prust
Bourque
Desharnais
Moen
Halpern
Armstrong
Gionta

Total Points: 287

Ottawa

Turris
Alfredsson
Michalek
Conacher
Zibanejad
Silfverberg
Z.Smith
Neil
Latendresse
Greening
Condra
Pageau

Total Points: 209


Montreal can boast what the Sens boast at forward = depth, and a lot of it. Their rookies Galchenyuk and Gallagher are young forces to be reckoned with. They benefited from playing the game the right way and being a strong 2nd line force most nights to combine for 55 points between the two of them.

Pacioretty is one of the budding power forwards of the league. He's got size, he's got loads of skill and should benefit from seeing time with playmakers such as Plekanec and Ryder - who seems to have found a new lease on life in Montreal.

Don't discount what Prust brings to the Montreal lineup. Not only can he grind with the best of them, but he's not at all afraid to drop the mitts if the need arises. A true energy player who is built for the playoffs, Ottawa must make sure to keep an eye on him at all times.

What to watch for from Montreal:

An at-times viciously aggressive forecheck that can leave defenders in poor positions leading to turn overs.

The league's 5th best PP is a powerful machine. Avoid taking penalties, or you'll have the duo of Subban and Markov hop over the boards to control the back end. A tough, tough PP to hold in check.

What to watch from Ottawa:

Ottawa can roll 3 nice lines at an opposition. Ottawa's been doing this all year, they can't really score, but they can shut down opponents long enough to score the odd 'clutch' goal. With Alfredsson, Turris, Michalek and the Swedish Mafia, there should be some offense to go around. Conacher, Pageau and Condra has come forward as the 'it' line - as in, a line that forechecks every bit as hard as Montreal's lines and has provided some much needed offense.

To combat Montreal's solid powerplay, Ottawa has the top ranked PK in the entire league at 88%. Power on power - should be interesting to watch. Condra is a staple of Ottawa's league leading PK, Methot, Cowen, Gryba and even Karlsson will be leaned on, as they have been all year.

Advantage = Montreal



2. Defence:

Montreal:

Subban
Markov
Diaz
Bouillon
Gorges
Tinordi/Weber

Ottawa:

Karlsson
Cowen
Gryba
Methot
Wiercioch
Phillips
Gonchar

What to watch for from Montreal:

With an ill timed injury to Emelin, Montreal will likely give Tinordi some playoff minutes - and he's been very solid as a first year player.

But what to really watch (out) for....is obviously the one-two punch of Subban and Markov - particularly on special teams as mentioned. Subban's 38 points place him in a tie for top spot in the league with Letang.

After Markov and Subban, Josh Gorges has proven himself to be a sturdy defensive player, especially shot blocking, where he ranks 7th in the league with 119 in 48 games (by that comparison Ottawa's highest shot blocker is Marc Methot with 81).

What to watch for from Ottawa:

Many things. Erik Karlsson comes to mind as the top thing to watch for from Ottawa. With 12 points in 14 games in a shortened regular season, he's obviously a titan when it comes to offense, but as we all know, he can do much more than that.

Perhaps just as noteworthy is Marc Methot, who's played at a fantastic level all year and proven that he can shutdown teams with the best of the them, while having excellent mobility and some offense.

Sergei Gonchar has a career resurgence this year with Ottawa, stepping up as much as anyone when Karlsson went down. Gonchar is a guy who can continue to elevate his play when the chips are down, so a lot of eyes will be on him to lead this defensive core through the ups and downs.

Also worth keeping an eye on are the Sens' rookies - not to even mention the heralded return of Jared Cowen. Eric Gryba, Patrick Wiercioch (who may not play too much this post-season), Benoit (see Wiercioch) have all provided needed sparks throughout the year, with Gryba seemingly cementing himself as a shutdown D-man with Methot for most of the year. The question will be: can they sustain their levels of play going into the post season?


Advantage = Ottawa (barely)


3.Goaltending:

Pretty simple here...it's very close for both teams. Anderson vs Price is an excellent matchup that was probably not even on the radar two years ago. Since then Anderson has emerged as a true starter - one of the top in the Eastern conference. Going toe to toe with Lundqvist last post-season began what would end up being a record setting 2013 season, finishing with a .941 save %.

This is a draw in my eyes, but either goaltender can steal a win on any given night.

Advantage = Even


Final Analysis:

This should be a heck of a series. Fast paced, great goaltending, aggressive forechecking , this one could and probably will go down to a game 7. It's hard to give one team the edge over the other, but if Carey Price can up his game, this'll probably go to Montreal.

If he sputters, the Sens could take this series and run.

But it'll be a long one, that you can bet on.

Save % will be huge. Price is like 0.905. Andy is 0.941. It starts with these guys and though on the surface it doesn't seem like a competition, we all know price will raise his game for the playoffs. Andy, relatively speaking, has struggled the last couple games. He's gotta come up big and should be out to prove he can win a playoff series.

That's the battle for me, pretty much. I'm certain we're going to get outshot and outchanced in each game and I guarantee sens take more penalties too. Same as in the regular season, its to weather the storm and then slowly break down your opponent and it all has to start with anderson.

Yeah, Montreal's power play was very good. How good? Well, in head-to-head competition against the Sens, they scored 4 goals on 20 opportunities, or 20%. That would put them slightly closer to "mediocre" than "good".

In those same 4 games the Sens only drew 12 PP opportunities. Guess on how many they, ahem, Capitalized? Give up? 5 of them. That's 5 of 12 or 41.7%. And that's *without* Spezza in any of the games, and without Karlsson/Anderson/Michalek in the last two.

wprager wrote:Yeah, Montreal's power play was very good. How good? Well, in head-to-head competition against the Sens, they scored 4 goals on 20 opportunities, or 20%. That would put them slightly closer to "mediocre" than "good".

In those same 4 games the Sens only drew 12 PP opportunities. Guess on how many they, ahem, Capitalized? Give up? 5 of them. That's 5 of 12 or 41.7%. And that's *without* Spezza in any of the games, and without Karlsson/Anderson/Michalek in the last two.

Interesting stat. That means Bishop/Anderson was on the top of their games.

Michallica wrote:Save % will be huge. Price is like 0.905. Andy is 0.941. It starts with these guys and though on the surface it doesn't seem like a competition, we all know price will raise his game for the playoffs. Andy, relatively speaking, has struggled the last couple games. He's gotta come up big and should be out to prove he can win a playoff series.

That's the battle for me, pretty much. I'm certain we're going to get outshot and outchanced in each game and I guarantee sens take more penalties too. Same as in the regular season, its to weather the storm and then slowly break down your opponent and it all has to start with anderson.

I have to call a bit of BS on Andy struggling. His SV% was still .920 in the loss to Philly. Too bad they could only score 1. In the 9 games since returning from his injury he had 4 games with sub-900 SV%. In the other 5 he was .954 combined.

Let's compare shots and SV%, shall we? In the 4 games the Habs outshot the Sens 154 to 116. The bulk of those shots came in the last two games (45 in each) when we were missing EK and Michalek, on top of already missing Spezza; in the first two games the Sens were outshot 64-60, combined. Discounting the fact that we now have Karlsson *and* Cowen in the lineup, if you take those lop-sided shot results and multiply through by the goalie's save percentages, you end up with 9 goals for the Habs and 11 for the Sens.

The more I go through these math exercises the more (I hope) you all realize that all of this goes out the window in three days. Yes, on paper and in the spreadsheet this should be a cakewalk. But it is very hard to predict what till happen on the ice.

SpezDispenser wrote:

wprager wrote:Yeah, Montreal's power play was very good. How good? Well, in head-to-head competition against the Sens, they scored 4 goals on 20 opportunities, or 20%. That would put them slightly closer to "mediocre" than "good".

In those same 4 games the Sens only drew 12 PP opportunities. Guess on how many they, ahem, Capitalized? Give up? 5 of them. That's 5 of 12 or 41.7%. And that's *without* Spezza in any of the games, and without Karlsson/Anderson/Michalek in the last two.

Interesting stat. That means Bishop/Anderson was on the top of their games.

Bishop and Lehner split the two SO games.

BTW, how do you explain the 5 PP goals from Ottawa (2 of which came without Spezza, Karlsson or Michalek in the lineup)?

SV% is very greatly affected by where the shots are coming from and the situation in front of the goal. Cowen gives good crease clearing and a long stick to keep shooters to the outside. Emelin being gone is the opposite for the Habs.

Now, of course it's not like Emelin is not being replaced. More ice time for Tinordi, perhaps. Still, the stats indicate that when Emelin went down Price suddenly became a very bad goalie; so did Budak, except he didn't have very far to go.

The reply button disappeared. Anyways, Prags that's why I said relatively he's struggling. To still have 4 games where he was sub-0.900% isn't exactly telling me he's not struggling.

Michallica wrote:The reply button disappeared. Anyways, Prags that's why I said relatively he's struggling. To still have 4 games where he was sub-0.900% isn't exactly telling me he's not struggling.

To understand your point, Michallica, you have to perform the difficult task of actually watching the games and forming an opinion on Anderson's play -- which, I agree, has not been quite what it was pre-injury. If you are of the opinion that stats tell the whole story, however, you take them at face value.

rooneypoo wrote:

Michallica wrote:The reply button disappeared. Anyways, Prags that's why I said relatively he's struggling. To still have 4 games where he was sub-0.900% isn't exactly telling me he's not struggling.

To understand your point, Michallica, you have to perform the difficult task of actually watching the games and forming an opinion on Anderson's play -- which, I agree, has not been quite what it was pre-injury. If you are of the opinion that stats tell the whole story, however, you take them at face value.

It's true though. Anderson's been shedding some rust these days. He's been good, but nothing extraordinary - which we might need in this post season.

Hopefully bad reffing wont kill this for us. The Habs fans taking over Scotiabank will be hard to take in playoff games.


We have what it takes to win this, but it will be no cakewalk for either team.

My number 1 worry is the potential for poor officiating giving the Habs the unfair advantage.

Bruins will face the same tilted ice I think.

Number Twenty Nine wrote:Hopefully bad reffing wont kill this for us. The Habs fans taking over Scotiabank will be hard to take in playoff games.


We have what it takes to win this, but it will be no cakewalk for either team.

My number 1 worry is the potential for poor officiating giving the Habs the unfair advantage.

Bruins will face the same tilted ice I think.

I thought games 3 or 4 in Ottawa were basically sold out before the Sens played the Bruins. Now unless most of the Sens season seat holders are actually Habs fans -- how could they fill the building.. UNLESS Sens fans sell them the tickets. Which would severely piss me off.

BTW apparently tonight on the CBC panel for the playoffs.. Mr. Glenn Healey called Karlsson a one-trick pony. I hate that CBC is doing the Sens series... I really hate it. At least Healey is doing his beloved Leafs series.. and I hope they get their asses kicked really bad.

sandysensfan wrote:

Number Twenty Nine wrote:Hopefully bad reffing wont kill this for us. The Habs fans taking over Scotiabank will be hard to take in playoff games.


We have what it takes to win this, but it will be no cakewalk for either team.

My number 1 worry is the potential for poor officiating giving the Habs the unfair advantage.

Bruins will face the same tilted ice I think.

I thought games 3 or 4 in Ottawa were basically sold out before the Sens played the Bruins. Now unless most of the Sens season seat holders are actually Habs fans -- how could they fill the building.. UNLESS Sens fans sell them the tickets. Which would severely piss me off.

BTW apparently tonight on the CBC panel for the playoffs.. Mr. Glenn Healey called Karlsson a one-trick pony. I hate that CBC is doing the Sens series... I really hate it. At least Healey is doing his beloved Leafs series.. and I hope they get their asses kicked really bad.

IMO, there's no reason to get mad about Healey, it's one less 'expert' to listen to (lol). I personally stopped listening to that windbag when he first started. I bet there was at least one analyst who disagreed with him - and there's a reason for that as he's full of Dung.

Michallica wrote:The reply button disappeared. Anyways, Prags that's why I said relatively he's struggling. To still have 4 games where he was sub-0.900% isn't exactly telling me he's not struggling.

My point was that he didn't slip from .94x to .91x but that he had some games where he was pretty bad, and other games where he was brilliant. So inconsistent as opposed to a simple drop.

sandysensfan wrote:

Number Twenty Nine wrote:Hopefully bad reffing wont kill this for us. The Habs fans taking over Scotiabank will be hard to take in playoff games.


We have what it takes to win this, but it will be no cakewalk for either team.

My number 1 worry is the potential for poor officiating giving the Habs the unfair advantage.

Bruins will face the same tilted ice I think.

I thought games 3 or 4 in Ottawa were basically sold out before the Sens played the Bruins. Now unless most of the Sens season seat holders are actually Habs fans -- how could they fill the building.. UNLESS Sens fans sell them the tickets. Which would severely piss me off.

BTW apparently tonight on the CBC panel for the playoffs.. Mr. Glenn Healey called Karlsson a one-trick pony. I hate that CBC is doing the Sens series... I really hate it. At least Healey is doing his beloved Leafs series.. and I hope they get their asses kicked really bad.

Scalpers are not necessarily fans of one or the other. They go online and buy all they can so they can then sell it at a premium. Worst case (Washington) would have been to recover their initial investment and maybe make a small profit. But if it ended up Montreal or even Boston they could make a decent profit.