Bruins vs Canadiens

BROSSARD, Quebec -- Montreal Canadiens coach Michel Therrien was looking for a way to get David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty going offensively.

It was mid-November and the Canadiens forwards were having difficult starts to the 2013-14 season. Desharnais had one assist in his first 19 games, and Therrien made him a healthy scratch on Nov. 5 and Nov. 12. Pacioretty had two goals and two assists in 12 games, well below his normal standards.

Their struggles were mitigated by the strong play of the line of Lars Eller between two second-year players, Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher. In their first 21 games together, they combined to score 19 goals with 22 assists.

But Therrien knew the Canadiens needed to get Pacioretty and Desharnais going or the season likely would be going nowhere. So the coach made the difficult decision to remove Gallagher from the Eller line and placed him with Desharnais and Pacioretty.

In their first game together, Nov. 19 against the Minnesota Wild, Pacioretty got a hat trick and Desharnais and Gallagher each had two assists in a 6-2 Canadiens victory.

A new top line was born.

BROSSARD, Quebec -- Like Boston Bruins coach Claude Julien and most of the players, general manager Peter Chiarelli on Wednesday didn't sound like he was losing any sleep over Montreal Canadiens defenseman P.K. Subban knocking the net off behind goalie Carey Price with eight seconds remaining in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Second Round on Tuesday.

Down by one goal, the Bruins were pressuring the Canadiens with an extra attacker on the ice when the whistle blew to stop play and adjust the net. The Bruins didn't possess the puck for more than a second after the faceoff, and the Canadiens got an empty-net goal from Lars Eller to win 4-2 and take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 series.

Game 4 is Thursday at Bell Centre (7:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, RDS).

MONTREAL -- These were not the Boston Bruins who won 12 games in a row and earned a point in the standings in 16 straight games during a historic March.

Well, the personnel was the same, the uniforms were the same, but the Bruins who are down 2-1 in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Montreal Canadiens are playing a completely different type of hockey.

The Bruins are playing mistake-riddled hockey.

After losing 4-2 in Game 3 on Tuesday at Bell Centre, the Bruins will try to right themselves in Game 4 on Thursday in the same rink (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, CBC, RDS).

They'll try to snap a streak of three straight games during which they have fallen behind by at least two goals. They were able to force double overtime before losing Game 1 then won Game 2 with a four-goal third period.

MONTREAL -- Michel Therrien lives in a petri dish under the microscope that is the Montreal hockey market.

Every one of Therrien's moves as coach of the Montreal Canadiens is dissected and analyzed to death, and to say he is open to criticism would be stating things mildly. He works in a firing range of criticism.

When Therrien was hired by general manager Marc Bergevin for his second stint as coach of his hometown team, the endorsement from the fan base and the media was far from unanimous. His decisions sometimes appear strange from the outside, but they also work more often than not.

The latest example came Tuesday in Game 3 of the Canadiens Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Boston Bruins, a 4-2 win that gave Montreal a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 series.

For additional insight into the Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens, NHL.com enlisted the help of longtime NHL assistant/associate coach Kevin McCarthy.

McCarthy played in more than 500 NHL games with the Philadelphia Flyers, Vancouver Canucks and Pittsburgh Penguins, then spent a decade as an assistant and associate coach with the Carolina Hurricanes, where he was a member of the staff that led them to a Stanley Cup championship in 2006. He joined the Flyers as an assistant during the 2009-10 season and stayed in Philadelphia until October 2013.

Home-ice advantage has shifted to the Montreal Canadiens in their Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Boston Bruins, and Kevin McCarthy feels that might prove to be significant.

Canadiens coach Michel Therrien will now have the last change, and if he's smart about it, he could drive Bruins coach Claude Julien up the wall, McCarthy says.

He remembers facing Julien and the Bruins in an Eastern Conference Semifinals series of the 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs with the Carolina Hurricanes, a series Carolina won in overtime of Game 7.

BROSSARD, Quebec -- The Montreal Canadiens were playing on the road against the Ottawa Senators on April 4 and defenseman P.K. Subban had what could generously be described as a difficult night.

His first two shifts ended in Senators goals, and coach Michel Therrien decided Subban should sit the rest of the period after playing 37 seconds.

Therrien said afterwards that Subban "wasn't ready to start the game" to justify the benching. Though it would be hard to argue with that statement, Therrien's decision was debated ad nauseam on Montreal open line radio shows and on social media for days.

BOSTON -- Watching the Montreal Canadiens' nine power plays through the first two games of their Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Boston Bruins, one starts to wonder if the video is more appropriate for TV Land than NHL Network.

Each power play, of which four have turned into goals for the Canadiens, is a rerun of the previous one. The Canadiens' strategy is as predictable as those old sitcoms.

Once they follow their trusted formula for getting the puck to defenseman P.K. Subban, however, the predictability ends. With his slap shot, wrist shot and ice vision, Subban is a potpourri of possibilities for puck movement as he walks the blue line.

The Montreal Canadiens are trying their best to have a selective memory.

The Canadiens had a day off Sunday after blowing a 3-1 third-period lead in the final 10 minutes of regulation to lose Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Boston Bruins 5-3 on Saturday.

The best-of-7 series is tied 1-1 and shifts to Montreal for Game 3 on Tuesday at Bell Centre (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, RDS).

Coach Michel Therrien and defenseman Josh Gorges chatted with reporters on a conference call Sunday and both preached the message that the past is behind them. The only thing they want to remember about the Canadiens' trip to Boston is that they came back with the series tied.

BOSTON -- The Montreal Canadiens did exactly what they set out to do by splitting the first two games on the road in their Eastern Conference Second Round series against the Boston Bruins.

It's how that split came about that may linger in the Canadiens' minds for a couple of days.

Montreal did not lose in regulation time once in 42 games when it led after two periods, going 35-0-3 in the regular season and 4-0-0 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs entering Game 2 on Saturday.

The Canadiens were 10 minutes away from making that 43 games and 5-0-0 in the playoffs, but a 3-1 lead turned into a 5-3 loss in a matter of minutes, and now Montreal is left to wonder what might have been.

BOSTON -- The Boston Bruins have been one of the top teams in the NHL for years, but the Montreal Canadiens have consistently found a way to give them problems.

A big reason has been frustration.

Frustration with the Canadiens' speed, frustration with officiating, frustration with their inability to beat a team that is not nearly as good as they are, at least on paper.

As the second period of Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Second Round series progressed Saturday, that frustration began to rear its ugly head again.

Bruins defenseman Andrej Meszaros, playing for the first time in two weeks, was called for roughing against Tomas Plekanec at 16:23 of the second, giving Montreal a rare 4-on-3 power play.

Just as that power play became a standard 5-on-4, Thomas Vanek scored to put the Canadiens ahead 2-1.