One thing we learned when attending a press conference by Montreal head coach Guy Carbonneau, he breaks it into two sessions - the first part is done in French for the French media, then he switches over to English for the Anglophones. Undoubtedly he answers the same questions twice in some situations.

So this morning when Lindy Ruff met the press following the morning skate, someone jokingly asked if he could please do the conference in French. He smiled, but then when the first real question was fired - “What happened to Drew Stafford the other night?”, Ruff replied, je ne sais pas! Typical Lindy!

But Stafford’s injury is no laughing matter, and with him being out for the next couple of games at least, look for Ales Kotalik to get a bigger role and more ice time. Ruff also plans to match up Michael Ryan and Daniel Paille on Gaustad’s line. “they’ve given us a lot of energy and a lot of shifts.”

Despite rampant speculation that Ruff might sit slumping forward Maxim Afinogenov for a game or two, there are no plans to do that, for now. “The one thing I am is patient, we’ve had meeting and talked to Max on ways he can improve. He’s got to make a bigger commitment in certain areas. I’ve asked for a bigger commitment, and I’ve seen some areas of improvement” said Ruff.

Regarding the Canadiens, Ruff says, ‘Yeah we’re getting a heavy dose. There really are no secrets between these two teams. Our job is to get traffic in front of the net and create scoring chances, as well as neutralizing their power play.”

There are still pairs available in the upper reaches of the 300s, and scattered singles elsewhere for this Gold priced game, and being a Friday night and a holiday weekend, expect those tickets to be gone by faceoff time, which is at 7:30pm. I’ve got the AV chair tonight and will have a post game report later on tonight.

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