You could not POSSIBLY script this any better...

This is just the beginning of something very special in Montreal, as not only do both Jackais get a goal in the Habs' second preseason game and a huge victory versus the Philadelphia Flyers, Florian nearly got a Gordie Howe hat-trick, but not just that. The looks of the first line, Suzuki, Hudson, and then Cole Coffield connecting on this drive, with even Scarface, Uri Slavkovsky chipping in with an assist. Everything that could have gone right, except for maybe one or two things, did go right for Montreal, as we are on the verge of this team, not only just maybe in something special for all Habs fans, but all NHL fans who are ready to tune into this version of the Montreal Canadiens. We get a breakdown of what happened in the game and some interesting aspects that do have some pretty big impacts on the future, the Jackais stuff, all that coming up on this episode. And you know what? Why not just start with the box score? Because I think the box score is very telling. You know, feel free to pause, make sure you're turned to HD and take a look at it. There's so many things we can get into here, but you know, I want to talk about the Jackais after, but I want to talk about some other guys first. I promise we'll get into the first line, maybe in the intro it sounded like I was saying Hudson was playing the wing, but anyway, you guys know what I'm getting into. I want to talk about some of the maybe more unsung guys in this game. And the first thing I want to mention is that whole line with Florian Jackai on it, but with Tyler Thorpe and Luke Tuck, because those guys, Tyler Thorpe especially, absorbing a hit from Nick Deloria before making a great play to Florian Jackai. That pass to Florian was so, so nice after absorbing a hit from a huge NHL. And we saw Florian drop the mitts a little bit later, but Thorpe and Tuck really served great roles there. And again, like when you're talking about the Montreal Canadiens moving forward, you know, kind of who your top level guys are, you know, who's going to be gone maybe in a couple of years. Again, like Gallagher, I'd love for him to be a Habit for Life. We don't know if it'll work with the contract. Kim and Anderson are kind of the outliers in terms of longer-term deals. Mike Matheson in the short term, of course a lot of us know. But when you're looking for guys that can fit in this team long-term, you really need to carve out a role for yourself, a niche. Jake Evans did it very, very well. He played center, he got better at face-offs, turned into a fantastic penalty killer. Now to be fair, he was never like a crazy scorer or anything, but filling in that niche is something the Habs have needed, and it turned into a great season, a great long-term contract for him, and I'm happy for him. And there's other guys that stand out like that too. Carving your role is very important. Now, Florian I do think is above guys like Tuck and Thorpe in the depth chart, but again, you never really know with these guys, because when you have that skill set, you absolutely can get the Habs brass to take notice, and so I thought they were good. Another name that I wanted to bring up was Vincent Rohrer, who looked really good in the over two minutes of penalty killing time that he got. He only took one face-off, and he won at 19 shifts, 15 minutes time on ice, had two shots, he even blocked a shot with three hits, the small, small little Vincent Rohrer, which was really, really cool to see, and if you look at the overall game score scores for a lot of these guys, you'll see Rohrer was not really near the top, he was back near the bottom, so was Caden Cooley, but I think that's maybe a little misleading, it's hard to tell overall with this. One, Newhook down at the bottom, I didn't love that line tonight, I really, like, Bolduk looked better than them, but like, man, it was, it was a bit interesting, though do I even see Bolduk here? I don't actually see Bolduk on this at all, anyway, whatever, that's beside the point, but you can see guys like Vincent Rohrer, look at the team defense above average, now a lot of these guys had very good defense against Philly today, Kakanen let in some iffy goals, but look, it is what it is, Rohrer had a really good defensive performance, so did Caden Cooley, and that's what I really love from a lot of these guys, you can even see Jackeye Tuck and Thorpe right there in the middle, it was really, really entertaining to see, and one other guy that I want to get into before I get into the first line and the Jackeye bros, it is David Reimbacher, and if I flash this back up, I don't think what you see here is representative of what Habs fans are saying about him, because statistically, when he was on the ice, the team did pretty well, Reimbacher himself made some pretty bad mistakes, though, a bad play at the blue line to hit off escape, he tried to chop at the puck, but it allowed Philly to break out and get a goal, it kind of sucked, but you know what Marty St. Louis did? He used to do this with Justin Barron, it's not just him, I guess, go right back out there and prove to me that that was just a one-off mistake, right? Reimbacher was out there to shift after that pretty big blunder at the blue line, and he was out there to prove himself, and you know what? He was on the ice when Nick Suzuki scored his goal to restore the two-goal lead from Juraj Slapkowski later in the game, which I absolutely loved, so David Reimbacher, I still think he looks shaky, I still think he needs some time in the AHL, I am ready for a full season of David Reimbacher, and mark my words, he's going to settle in and look confident again very soon, I'm talking within the first month of the season, we're going to see a huge difference from Reimbacher today, and then we just have to give him a little bit of time, though I know a lot of you probably aren't impressed with him, I wasn't necessarily impressed with the game, but I still have faith that with time, with a full season, he'll get there, but let's get into that top line because oh boy, I mean, we know the top line is so good, let's roll those highlights, first off, 53 seconds into this one, I mean, can I just play this again and again? What a snipe from Caulfield, by the way, but Suzuki to Hudson to Caulfield on this odd man rush, oh my goodness, that is unbelievable to look at, and again, you look at the top performance of this team, Cole Caulfield, Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slavkovski, number one, two, and three, Lane Hudson soon after, but look at that team defense above average for Lane Hudson, that's right, the lane train bringing the defense tonight, this is, of course, hockey stack cards, great follow, great website, this is where we get these stack cards, Lane Hudson had the single highest team defense above average performance of any player on the Habs, as in, the Habs defense was the best when Lane Hudson was on the ice tonight, his individual defense was not great, he was in the negative along with Herbert Jacki, Alexander Carrier, but these are so difficult to discern one game to the next, these little plays, it's really hard to figure out where and when and why, but regardless, the team was a lot better defensively with him on the ice, funny enough, it was actually below average offensively when he was on the ice, so again, these small sample sizes are what they are, you can't really glean too, too much from them, but Lane Hudson, like, straight up, I mean, I think we all can be honest with ourselves that Lane Hudson objectively looked like he is not gonna have a sophomore, so this dude looked so quick, so decisive, so many unbelievable plays, yeah, a couple little fumbles here and there, but this is what the preseason is for, to get those kinks out, to get ready, get back into this game speed, so unreal from him, but again, it was that top line really, really showing out tonight, I also forgot to mention Sammy Blay earlier, he's interesting, I wanted to show something on that as well, but look, anyway, Uri Slavkovsky, of course, getting the assist, he took a skate blade to the face, actually, one second, I got something I gotta bring up, I made this right after he went to the locker room, so if you like this, look, if you wanna leave a like on the video, subscribe to the channel, do it for this, this took me, like, a whole six minutes to do in Photoshop and I think it's pretty cool, so this might be, I want this to become like a meme or something, because I don't know how long he's gonna have this scar, but I figured I wanted to show you guys that, he came out and was so good, I loved how aggressive our boy Slavzilla was tonight, like, I think you guys all saw that too, the dude was along the boards hitting people, pushing people, was he absolutely stellar every single minute he was out there? Not necessarily, but again, like, he was impactful, no matter what he did, winning those board battles, making those plays, giving that puck to Nick Suzuki that we're gonna see here in a moment, he was unreal at a lot of moments in this game and it just goes to show why this first line was one of the best first lines statistically in the NHL last season and at one point in this game, I don't know when it finished, the Montreal Canadiens' first line here of Caulfield-Suzuki-Slavkovski were outdoing the Flyers while they were on the ice in shot attempts 19-0 and shots 11-0. No, it's not a typo, at one point Eric Engels tweeted that out during the game, which is absolutely insane for the first line, but again, it doesn't even stop there with the first line, but before I get to the Jackeyes, I know I said I wouldn't do this, but I wanted to show this, I want to talk about something Anthony Malkuth said, I'm bouncing back and forth, but there's so much to digest here today, because there's so many things I want to talk about, but he's really excited to see who gets those 12th and 13th spots among the Canadiens for it, he said he really thinks it's going to be a battle, you know, it wasn't a great match for Joshua Waugh, Valero and Blais, Rohrer did really good, like Fleury and Jackeye, it depends what the Habs are looking for, and I tend to agree, like Sammy Blais, I thought though, had a pretty good game, he had a lot of hits, he looked like NHL ready, because he's a guy who's played a lot in the NHL, has been a very good AHL player, Waugh looked okay, right, and we know Waugh was really auditioning for that kind of third-line winger role, and Fleury and Jackeye, again, stood out hugely in this game, which is something we were expecting, but yeah, I mean, I don't know, it was unreal, he also went 4-1 on the dot, Fleury and Jackeye won 80% of his face-offs, that was the best on the team of anyone who took more than one face-off, even Suzuki went 10-4, Fleury had a better rate, so I want to get your guys' thoughts quickly, who are your front-runners for the 12th and 13th forward spots for the Montreal Canadiens, a lot of people liked Rohrer, including myself, Joe Valeno I thought had a pretty decent game, Gley is kind of an interesting one, I'd love to hear your thoughts, but look, it's time to get into the Jackeye boys, and this is amazing, because their mother, Simona, drove up, she came all the way up to Montreal to watch these guys in their first game that they played together, and like, how could you script this any better, there she is right there, two goals, one goal from each of them, and even Fleury getting into a bit of a fight with one of the best fighters in the NHL, a Nick Delorier, you could argue he's the best fighter in the NHL right now, but seeing both of these guys do this was honestly incredibly heartwarming, like, it was almost surreal to watch Arbor, he tried, that first clearing attempt went way wide, the second one off the boards, and it nearly went in, the third one, it got turned over right to him, and you know, you knew exactly where that puck was going, and there's a good reason Arbor Jackeye was right here near the top, yes, scoring a goal obviously does put you near the top of the performance cards, as it should, I mean, that helps your team more than almost anything else, but his defense today was pretty good, and I will say, he did make some pretty bad plays, there were some moments in this game where he did not look very good, but overall, he looks faster, he looks smoother, and preseason is the time to get these kinks out, right, and he got that goal at the end, it was a feel-good moment, you know, I'm pretty confident that Arbor Jackeye, like, especially after a pretty good training camp, he's looking to take that number six defenseman spot, and just run with it, Jaden Struel had a fine game yesterday, Arbor Jackeye, some mistakes, some good things today, it's going to be a battle, we still got a good number of preseason games left, I think another four, three or four, I think a couple against Toronto, a couple against Ottawa, and then the regular season is here, but Arbor Jackeye and Florian Jackeye, regardless, in their first game playing together at the pro level, they both score a goal, which I feel like you just can't script, this is beyond, the people who think sports are scripted, this is beyond a script, this is unreal to see, and it's the start of something special, not only familial, but for the way this team looks, the way the chemistry is, even in a game that, like, yeah, we looked pretty dominant for some parts, but we came out pretty sloppy there later in the game, this team still managed to get a nice decisive win, and it is so, so, so fun, so shout-out to the Habs, and a shout-out to Jakub Dobesh, who had a great game, Kapokatkin had kind of left, hung out to dry, because it was a breakaway, the very first shot he faced, but look, all in all, it was a fun game, leave your thoughts on everything down below, because that'll do it for this episode of Habs Digest, if you enjoyed, hey, you know what to do, hit subscribe to the channel, we got videos coming out every single day, we're so excited for the regular season, I hope you stick along for the ride with us, I've been your host Josh Goss, and I'll catch you in the next one.