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OTTAWA - The Montreal Canadiens, in the eyes of many of their beholders, might have been born of divine intervention 100 years ago.
But here in 2010, they are proving not all teams are creative equal.
The Habs went through their third-straight game without a goal at even-strength Saturday, a run that cracked the 200-minute barrier in their 3-2 overtime loss to the streaking Ottawa Senators, who rattled off a franchise-record ninth win a row.
In case you had forgotten - it was more than a week ago - the Canadiens’ last even-strength goal was scored by Mike Cammalleri last Saturday against the New York Rangers at 6:17 of the second period of their 6-0 win.
That means they have gone 214 minutes and 43 seconds of play since there were five skaters on the ice to celebrate the lamp being lit.
If the Habs were waiting for Cammalleri to get the next one, it might be a while.
He left the game with seven minutes to go after getting slammed by Ottawa defenceman Anton Volchenkov and pitching violently into the boards, his right leg whipping behind him. It didn’t look good and he was to get an MRI to assess the potential damage to his knee, an unusual trip for a player who had only missed four games the last four years.
Cammalleri leads the Habs with 26 goals - twice as many as anybody else - and has potted only four of them on the power play. His 22 even-strength goals going into Saturday night’s games are the fourth-most in the NHL behind Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin’s 26 and the 25 scored by San Jose’s Patrick Marleau and Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby.
“Hopefully, nothing bad comes out of this,” said Canadiens forward Brian Gionta of the Cammalleri situation. “You just hope it’s nothing too serious.”
Serious as a heart attack, if Cammalleri is going to be out for any length of time.
Not surprisingly, the Canadiens have just the one point they earned Saturday to show for their three games where they have needed an extra body to get the puck behind the opposition goaltender and are mired in the big pack around the eighth and final playoff spot, but giving up a bunch of games in hand.
“We’re doing some good things,” said Gionta of the Habs’ 29-shot effort against Ottawa’s Brian Elliott. “We’re just a little off. We have to be a little sharper in the neutral zone. If the play’s not there, we have to give ourselves a chance to get it back on the dump.”
But as bad as they are at even-strength, they are as good with the man advantage.
The league’s leading power play gave them a sniff against the Senators, pulling them out of a 2-0 hole.
The Habs are a model of relentless, merciless effiency when they have the man advantage. Their two goals Saturday came on a couple of tap-ins from the blue paint after working the puck around. The combined length of the one touches by Benoit Pouliot and Gionta were, well, probably shorter than the 5-foot-6 Gionta.
There’s no secret why the Canadiens are having trouble scoring when nobody’s in the penalty box. They are small up front which leads to a reluctance to throw the puck deep and get going any kind of grinding game. They like to try and score off the rush and with the way teams backcheck these days, that’s not an easy thing to do.
Of course, trying to find a way to score at even-strength against the Senators these days is like trying to find Tiger Woods.
The Senators have given up just eight 5-on-5 goals in their last nine games.
Not that it’s going to get any easier, either. The Canadiens next game is against the Vancouver Canucks at the Bell Centre Tuesday night.
The Canucks are second in the NHL behind the Washington Capitals in even-strength scoring.
chris.stevenson@sunmedia.ca