- 1 Montreal Canadiens vs Utah Mammoth: Fowler’s seven-game run meets a 34% power play
- 2 Montreal Canadiens: five straight wins and a captain’s return window opening
- 3 Utah Mammoth: sixth in goals, last line of defense at .867
- 4 Free NHL Prediction: Montreal Canadiens vs Utah Mammoth
- 5 About our free predictions
- 6 No commitment from us
- 7 Information changes
- 8 Your responsibility
- 9 Responsible gambling
- 10 Legal age
- 11 About visuals
Montreal Canadiens vs Utah Mammoth: Fowler’s seven-game run meets a 34% power play 
Jacob Fowler has won seven straight starts for Montreal. Over the last 40 years only two other rookie goaltenders, Carey Price and Jakub Dobes, have put together a run that long for the Canadiens, and Fowler’s includes a game in which St. Louis fired 46 shots at him and didn’t score.
The streak reached seven on 31 October, when Montreal beat Pittsburgh 5-4 at the Bell Centre. Fowler made 25 saves, Josh Anderson scored twice and added an assist, and the Canadiens moved to 9-3-2 with a five-game winning streak and points in seven straight games (6-0-1).
Utah comes to Montreal on Thursday 5 November, puck drop 7pm ET at the Bell Centre. The Mammoth were 9-5-0 with 18 points entering November, and their 51 goals ranked sixth in the NHL. Thursday is Utah’s third road game in five days, after Philadelphia on 1 November and Toronto on Tuesday.
The two teams reach this game by different routes. Montreal wins with goaltending: Fowler was named the NHL’s third star for the week ending 25 October after a 4-1 win in Chicago and a 2-1 win over Winnipeg at the Heritage Classic. Utah wins with volume and special teams: 427 shots in 14 games and a power play converting 16 of 47 chances, 34.04%.
The Mammoth’s weakness is at the other end. Utah’s team save percentage was .867 through 14 games, and opponents scored 15 times on 47 power plays, a penalty kill of roughly 68%. Montreal hosts Winnipeg on Tuesday and Utah plays in Toronto the same night, so both teams arrive with one day of rest.
We think Fowler’s form and Utah’s goaltending numbers point the same way. The question is whether Montreal can stay out of the penalty box long enough for that gap to decide the game.
Montreal Canadiens: five straight wins and a captain’s return window opening 
Nick Suzuki hasn’t played since mid-October. The Canadiens announced on 22 October that their captain would miss two to four weeks with an upper-body injury, which ended his ironman streak, and Thursday sits right at the early end of that timeline. Montreal has kept winning anyway, and the 31 October result extended the streak to five.
The scoring has spread out. Against Pittsburgh, Oliver Kapanen got his first goal of the season off an Owen Beck pass, Alexandre Texier scored after a spinning backhand feed from Lane Hutson, and Chris Kreider finished with a goal and an assist. Hutson had two assists, and Cole Caufield had a first-period goal taken away on a goaltender interference challenge.
Anderson’s night summed up the depth game: two goals, an assist and a blocked Erik Karlsson shot with 50 seconds left, one of three shots Montreal blocked in the final minute. Phillip Danault picked up an assist in his 800th NHL game. Kirby Dach was a late scratch with illness and Florian Xhekaj came in, recording an assist in 7:34.
The road form before that was strong. Montreal won 5-2 in Dallas on 29 October, after Fowler’s 46-save shutout in St. Louis earlier that week, and it went into the Pittsburgh game second in the Atlantic Division with 18 points from 13 games.
The one warning sign is discipline. Pittsburgh scored twice on the power play on Saturday, through Karlsson early and Sidney Crosby late, and Montreal’s own power play had zero shots on its second chance. Against a Utah unit at 34%, that’s the area we’d watch.
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Utah Mammoth: sixth in goals, last line of defense at .867 
Logan Cooley finished his hat trick in Pittsburgh on 29 October with one second left in overtime. Utah won 4-3 on 34 shots after trailing late, and the win took the Mammoth to 9-5-0. They’d scored 51 goals and allowed 46 at that point, 35 and 31 of them at even strength.
Mikhail Sergachev played 26:16 that night and scored on two shots. Across his first 330 minutes this season, Utah has controlled 54.6% of shot attempts with him on the ice, and he has four goals against 2.0 expected. He anchors the top pair with MacKenzie Weegar and plays on both the first power-play unit and the first penalty-kill unit.
The forward group is deep on paper. Projected lines put Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz and Dylan Guenther together, with Cooley, Vincent Trocheck and Lawson Crouse on the second line and Anders Lee, Barrett Hayton and Kailer Yamamoto on the third. Utah’s shooting percentage sits at 11.9%.
Goaltending is the problem. Karel Vejmelka and Sebastian Cossa are the projected options, and Vejmelka carries a career .899 save percentage and 3.08 goals-against average over 273 appearances. Utah has faced 346 shots and allowed 46 goals, and the .867 team save percentage is the weakest number in an otherwise strong profile.
The injury list is short but touches the blue line. John Marino (upper body) was expected back on 5 November, the date of this game, Michael Carcone was due off injured reserve on 1 November, and Maveric Lamoureux (shoulder) isn’t expected until February.
Probable lineup Montreal Canadiens: Not announced at time of publication (Jacob Fowler in goal for the last seven wins; Nick Suzuki’s status to be confirmed)
Probable lineup Utah Mammoth: Keller – Schmaltz – Guenther; Cooley – Trocheck – Crouse; Lee – Hayton – Yamamoto; McBain – Stenlund – But. Sergachev – Weegar; Schmidt – Peeke; Simashev – Duda. Goal: Vejmelka or Cossa (projected, subject to change)
Free NHL Prediction: Montreal Canadiens vs Utah Mammoth
Our prediction: Montreal Canadiens to win (moneyline)
We’re siding with Montreal at home. The Canadiens have a goaltender on seven straight wins and a 6-0-1 run over their last seven games, and they face a team whose save percentage sits at .867. Utah will create shots, but the gap in net is wider than the gap in skating talent.
Utah’s power play is the risk. At 34.04% it can turn three Montreal penalties into a one-goal game on its own, and the Canadiens gave up two power-play goals to Pittsburgh. We’d still rather back the team with the hotter goaltender, at home, on equal rest, against a penalty kill sitting around 68%.
Prices for Thursday hadn’t been posted at the time of writing. We’d take Montreal at 1.45 or bigger. If the line opens shorter, Over 6.5 goals is the alternative we’d consider, given Utah’s 97 goals for and against in 14 games and Montreal’s 5-4 and 5-2 results in its last two wins.
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