Bob Gainey likes defensive hockey, from his days as a Hab checker to his time in Minnesota and Dallas, Gainey hockey is normally a defensive thing. You take care of your end and the offense will take care of itself is the usual credo. But even the events of Thursday night, had to make him wonder about his young charges in rouge, blanc et bleu. Thursday night the defensive hockey was all in the Ottawa end, as the Sens hardly worked up a sweat protecting their end of the rink.
The Montreal Canadiens could only muster 12 shots on an underworked Domenic Hasek, none of which really tested the Senators goaltender who collected his fifth shut out of the season as the Senators defeated the Habs 3-0 at Scotiabank Place on Thursday night.
Montreal faced the embarrassing situation of almost setting a new team record for futility, when they went into the final four minutes of play with only nine shots on Hasek, a late game spurt of three saved them from setting the new standard of inaptitude, the twelfth shot on net, tying the old Habs record and saving them from a new entry in the books.
Over at the Montreal end of the rink, it was anything but a defensive effort as Cristobal Huet faced 40 shots from Senator snipers, with Zdeno Chara marking his fiftieth career goal and Daniel Alfredsson with two goals led the way to another victory for the Sens. Alfredsson's second goal was his 250th goal of his career.
Huet's start was his second consecutive game, as Gainey tries to find a way to help Jose Theodore get his head back into the game and try to get his team to start playing on the same page. Judging by the results of Thursday, there's need for some more homework for Gainey's guys!
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