It's not too often you hear of a middle-of-the-game trade that actually happens, but for Canadiens forward Mike Cammalleri, it was a very real event, and it happened in a blink of an eye in the middle of a 2-1 Bruins win over the Habs.
After the second period, Cammalleri was missing from the bench and there were reports that he was sent back to the hotel by the team, without any injuries. There were speculations that he was going to be traded after making comments about the teams "loser mentality" yesterday, but as of this morning, he was hoping for a long relationship with Montreal.
That ended.
"The only message is that we’re trying to improve our team and obviously our general manager makes a deal only if he feels he’s strengthening the team and I think that will be the case," Canadiens head coach Randy Cunneyworth said. "So that’s the only motive."
Cammalleri was traded to the Calgary Flames immediately after the game, alongside goaltender Karri Ramo and a fifth round draft pick for Calgary's Rene Bourque, Patrick Holland and a second round draft pick in 2013.
And unfortunately for the Canadiens organization, that's not all they lost tonight.
They dropped their ninth game in 12 total, and look like a defeated and desperate team. Though both teams played a fairly decent (albeit conservative) game, it wasn't enough to start any sort of trend for the last place in the Division team.
The Habs did have a chance to puts pucks in the net and if it weren't for goaltender Tim Thomas, they would have come out with a couple more goals. But once again, the streaking Bruins managed to capitalize on their chances and bringing home Game 5 of the season series.
Milan Lucic ended up with the game winning goal 3:43 into the third period. Nathan Horton had the puck down low behind the Habs net and dished it out to the front of the crease for a waiting Lucic. Lucic did a spin-around backhand, fooling Price who didn't even see it and, put the Bruins up 2-0 and added life to an otherwise lifeless game.
Things got a little heated with a little more than seven minutes to go in the period. P.K. Subban went up high on David Krejci, knocking him into the boards. Before anyone had a chance to realize what happened, Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference dropped his gloves and dragged Subban to the ice. Subban was nabbed with an elbowing minor, while Ference spent an extra two minutes for roughing.
That was one mistake the Bruins couldn't overcome.
29 seconds into the power play, Yannick Weber wristed one through traffic and over the glove of Tim Thomas, ruining his shutout chances, putting the Habs within a goal. But that was the last time they saw the back of the net, and they were once again sent back to the locker room with an all too familiar and unpleasant feeling.
"Well, we battled. We hung in there," Canadiens defenseman Hal Gill said. "We have to obviously do some things better but we were in the battle. We had one tough break on that first goal and we battled through that. We stayed in the game and we came up short but, you know, it was a better effort and it was a game we played hard and it’s disappointing but sometimes it’s tough to come by wins."
Also scoring for the Bruins, just 1:23 into the game was recently called up Jordan Caron. The play started when Johnny Boychuk threw the puck around the boards in the Habs zone. Goaltender Carey Price went to go and stop it behind the net, but the puck took a bizarre bounce and went right back in front of the net where Caron was conveniently perched. He had no problem sliding into the empty net.
The B's are now tied for second place in the league with points, sitting just below the New York Rangers. Meanwhile, the Habs sit at the bottom of the Division still, with the hole getting deeper.
"I thought we worked hard. We battled hard," Cunneyworth said. "It’s obviously a good team that we’re up against. Maybe a couple of untimely calls and maybe some favorable calls in their direction kind of enabled them to kind of pull it off there so, we thought we were coming pretty strong there with the big power play goal at the end there that gave us a lot of life and even before that, some of the opportunities that we had. [Boston goaltender Tim] Thomas was excellent between the pipes there when we were putting the pressure on and we did that in the earlier parts of the game, but obviously it was too little too late but we were proud of the way the guys battled."
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