Canadians are easy prey for hungry Bruins

For the second time in as many nights, the Montreal Canadiens faced an Atlantic Division rival, this time the Boston Bruins. While home openings are always highly topical affairs, they are Bleu, Blanc, Rouge vs. Black and Gold games.

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After the Bruins were denied a goal due to goalie interference, the Canadiens scored their second power play goal in as many games, and it was all thanks to Lane Hutson. The kid is all over the ice, dancing around so erratically that it's hard to keep up. Boston's defense probably agrees on that.

Less than two minutes later, the Bruins came back with a man advantage of their own through Charlie McAvoy. However, the game maintained its frenetic pace and Cole Caufield scored his second goal of the year just over a minute later to make the final score 2-1 for the Habs. It's worth nothing that Hutson scored another assist and held onto the puck until some space appeared in Boston's zone.

However, Boston scored two more goals before the end of the first period and took a 3-2 lead at the break. If Samuel Montembeault was flawless yesterday, Primeau definitely wasn't today. Making his life even more difficult was that the Canadiens couldn't win ties and only held on to the puck 30% of the time.

The big bad Bears added two unanswered goals in the middle frame and when the buzzer rang it was 5-2 Boston. The Maine team had 11 shots on goal at midfield, while the Canadiens were only able to get five through to Swayman. Who said you can't lighten the load on your goalie by playing him in the second game of the season if he missed all of training camp? After 40 minutes, the goalkeeper had barely broken a sweat.

Martin St-Louis tried to wake up his charges with some lineup changes, moving Anderson to the front row with Caufield and Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky to the second row with Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook.

Josh Anderson scored midway through the final frame to make it 5-3, a respectable loss. During the game, Oliver Kapanen got an assist, a first NHL point in his first NHL game.

By the halfway point of the final frame, Hutson had already made it 18 minutes, not bad at all for a rookie, and with five minutes to go he had made it over 20 minutes. At the final buzzer, he played 22:46 minutes behind only Mike Matheson on the Canadiens' blueline.

Related: Canadiens: What to expect from Lane Hutson

Gallagher gave Habs fans some hope with his second goal of the game, but it was too late as the Bruins scored a sixth goal. Final score: 6-4 Boston.

Related: Canadiens: What to expect from Brendan Gallagher

The Canadiens' defensive coverage got better as the game went on and in the end the Bruins had “only” 29 shots, a number that pales in comparison to the 47 seven shots given up to the Maple Leafs last night.

The Canadiens now have an off day before hosting the Ottawa Senators on Saturday at 7 p.m. Ottawa was also in action this evening, defeating the Cup champion Florida Panthers 3-1.