Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis won’t make any changes to his lineup for Thursday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS).
That means Samuel Montembeault will start in goal for the fourth time in five games this season, while defenceman Jayden Struble will miss his fifth straight game as he recovers from an upper-body injury and forward Michael Pezzetta will be a healthy scratch for the fifth straight game.
This will be the third straight start for Montembeault, who never started more than two consecutive games last season when the Canadiens carried three goalies for most of the campaign with Jake Allen and Cayden Primeau.
The Canadiens have a 2-2-0 record and are coming off a 6-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins Monday night at the Bell Centre. The Kings have a 1-1-2 record and are coming off a 6-2 loss to the Maple Leafs Wednesday night in Toronto. This is the fifth game of a seven-game road trip for the Kings to open the season.
Thursday’s game will be the 800th career regular-season game for Canadiens defenceman David Savard.
Cole Caufield leads the Canadiens in scoring with 4-0-4 totals, followed by Kaiden Guhle (1-3-4), Juraj Slafkovsky (1-3-4) and Lane Hutson (0-4-4).
Anze Kopitar leads the Kings in scoring with 3-3-6 totals, followed by Kevin Fiala (3-1-4), Brandt Clarke (0-4-4) and Alex Laferriere (2-1-3). Fiala has 2-6-8 totals in his last six games against the Canadiens.
The Canadiens played the Kings twice last season and lost both games by a 4-0 score. Los Angeles has won its last six games against the Canadiens and the Kings have a 7-3-0 in their last 10 games at the Bell Centre, including five shutouts.
The Kings fired Todd McLellan as head coach last February and replaced him with Jim Hiller.
“Last few years they played a stingy 1-3-1 (system),” Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis said about the Kings after Thursday’s morning skate at the Bell Centre. “I feel it gave us a little trouble to play our game. I haven’t seen them play that way this year yet, so I think it will be a different feel.
“I feel like I sound like a broken record, but we have to have a deep-game mentality and we have to be able to execute under pressure,” St. Louis added about facing the Kings. “I feel last game (against the Penguins) the first period we just didn’t beat their pressure because we threw pucks into each others’ feet. We didn’t make great passes and then when we did make a good pass we didn’t catch the pass. So our execution was way off and it was hard for us to just proceed to the next zone and to the next zone. So for us it’s just execute early, but have a deep-game mentality.”
The Canadiens and Kings will meet for the second and final time this season on Feb. 5 in Los Angeles.
The Canadiens’ following game will be Saturday in New York against the Islanders (7 p.m., CITY, SNE, TVA Sports).