It has been said that - from good defence comes great offence. On Wednesday night in Anaheim, the Montreal Canadiens displayed neither. Undisciplined play combined with a lack of drive, effort and finish contributed to the Canadiens 4-1 loss at the hands of the lowly Anaheim Ducks, the second worst team in the NHL.

PHOTO CREDIT - The Hockey News

Whitby - December 1, 2011 - It has been said that ‘from good defence comes great offence’. On Wednesday night in Anaheim, the Montreal Canadiens displayed neither. Undisciplined play combined with a lack of drive, effort and finish contributed to the Canadiens 4-1 loss at the hands of the lowly Anaheim Ducks, the second worst team in the NHL.

The loss to Anaheim now sees the Canadiens with three consecutive losses in a row. The schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Habs as they enter the Shark Pond on Thursday night at 10:30 p.m. to face San Jose.

The only bright spot for Montreal on Wednesday night was the performance of starting netminder, Peter Budaj. Budaj was the only reason this contest was not more lopsided than it was. Budaj made many spectacular saves and was often square to the puck to make many a timely save. Basically, Budaj was doing yeoman’s work for his team as he stopped 23-of-26 shots by the Ducks. Rookie right-winger Louie Leblanc saw limited action on Montreal’s third line playing alongside Lars Eller and Travis Moen in his first game as a Hab. Leblanc saw 7:52 minutes of icetime in ten shifts on Wednesday evening. He ended up with one shot on goal. Leblanc is the 800th player in Canadiens’ history to don a Montreal jersey.

The Anaheim line combination of Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf and Niklas Hagman were dominant against Montreal as they dangled and floated at will around the Canadiens’ skaters.

STATS & PHOTO CREDIT -

Montreal forwards cannot seem to finish their scoring chances when they are in close on the opposition’s netminder. Michael Cammalleri had a hard time finding the net at point-blank range. P.K. Subban looked downright awful at certain points in Wednesday’s contest. He took two selfish and lazy penalties in the third period alone.

Similarly, teammate Rafael Diaz showed he has obvious holes in his defensive zone play. He was noticeably suspect on three different occasions; the most obvious one when he was defending against a streaking Andrew Cogliano. Instead of turning into Cogliano as Cogliano was approaching Montreal’s blue line, Diaz turned away from Cogliano, allowing him to skate in towards Budaj with a scoring opportunity.

The Canadiens were zero-for-seven on the power play and are now 0-for-24. They allowed two power play goals on seven attempts against Anaheim. The announced three stars of the game to nobody’s surprise were Anaheim’s Devante Smith-Pelly (3rd star, one power play goal), Ryan Getzlaf (2nd star, one goal, two assists) and Corey Perry (1st star, one goal, one assist).

For the complete Boxscore and game summary, please visit the NHL.com link

The biggest news of the evening had nothing to do with the rumours of possibly trading Anaheim’s Bobby Ryan, rather with the firing of Randy Carlyle and the naming of recently fired Washington Capitals’ head coach Bruce Boudreau as Anaheim’s newest bench boss. Within approximately a half hour of Anaheim’s win over Montreal, the firing of Carlyle was announced by Ducks’ General Manager Bob Murray.

The Anaheim organization also relieved Assistant Coaches Dave Farrish and Mike Foligno of their coaching duties. Boudreau was released from his Washington coaching duties this past Monday - talk about a fast turnaround for Boudreau -less than 72 hours!

The Bobby Ryan trade rumours can now be put to bed - he won’t be going anywhere. Time for this writer to go to bed as well.

Until next time, play every game as if it is your last one…