JARO STEALS A SHUTOUT!!!!!!!!

Okay, so honestly, that's not fair. Halak didn't steal a thing. He deserved this win and he more than deserved this shutout. Oh yes, it was the Jaroslav Halak show again tonight. While the rest of his team skated around like as though they were still asleep, Halak was busy fending off the big scary Canucks which included the creepy scoring duo of Henrik and.... what's the other brother's name? Daniel? Whatever. Halak stopped them all including a few oddman rushes and a breakaway on... one of the Sedin twins. The "Big Swede" himself had a great chance which he couldn't capitalize on. Yay for Jaro! Way to show those annoying Swedes who's the boss!

What can I say about the game? Hmm... Habs looked sleepy at times but they also had some good moments and some great moments (most of which belonged to Jaro. Yes, I'm being biased right now. Sue me!). Powerplay couldn't get a rhythm going except for in the middle of a five minute one in which Markov scored the team's second goal of the night. Penalty kill was perfect tonight - and Halak was the center of said perfection. I'm tempted to say that the defense was awful but that's not really true. They had some great moments - especially on a powerplay in which the Canucks started off with a four minute 5 on 4 and ended up spending half of that 5 on 3 - and some bad moments which thankfully didn't turn into anything. The end of the Canucks "amazing powerplay that did nothing" resulted in Koivu getting the puck to Plekanec who went in alone on Luongo and buried it for the Habs' first goal. That was great and I'm sure the Canucks were hitting themselves upside the head for that one. Lapierre would add an empty netter at the end of the game.

The bloggers seem to either think that Halak alone was great and the rest sucked or everyone put up a big effort tonight. I think it's somewhere inbetween. You can't deny that there were some costly mistakes by the Habs that should have turned into goals for the Canucks and if Halak hadn't been so with it.....The Habs seemed pretty dozy for a lot of it and most of the play was concentrated in the Habs own end. And c'mon, the Habs can't blame the refs for all of those penalties.... just a couple.

• Stewart is sooo slooooow.... But I want to keep him because he's like a mini version of the Laraque that we wanted. Kind of. He hits everything and everyone in sight and he sticks up for his teammates. And he's not afraid to fight. Keeeeeeep hiiiiiiim.
  
• Kovalev needs to stop hitting the post.....He would have made the score 4-0...... grrr.....
• Two people that I would not want to be today are Luongo and Price. Luongo because his team dominated the Habs like crazy and yet he was the one who let in two goals. And Price because... well... At one point there was footage of the crowd bowing down to Halak. So. Yeah. No one was thinking of poor Pricey tonight. Poor guy.
• I think while the offense was a little passive, the defense worked pretty well actually. Any time when the defense isn't obstructing their own goalie is good *g*
  
• They did win a fair amount of faceoffs which is very good news.
  
• the PP was pretty bad but the PK worked wonderfully
  
• The crowd was noisy. Must have been insane there.
  
• Sundin being booed is funny to listen to for some reason....
• Someone should tell the Habs that you're supposed to hit the puck (you know, the little thing on the ice) not the other guy's face.
• Oh and thanks Breezer for saving Halak's hopes of a shutout!

I need to sleeeeeeep now. I'm being very random now.... *g* On a whole the game probably was better than I keep thinking it was. RDS just replayed Pleky's goal and I'm all smiles again... so yeah... nice win to have.... love you Jaro!

Enemy watch: Caps died and Flyers beat them 4-2 (do I really need to rant about this one?!) Ducks didn't get shot down and won 4-3 over the Sabres. Sens did something useful and squashed the Hurricanes. Almost perfect. Stupid Flyers though....