The Montreal Canadiens and the Vancouver Canucks meet in NHL action from Rogers Arena on Wednesday night.

The Montreal Canadiens will look to build on back-to-back wins after a 3-1 win over Edmonton last time out. Alexander Romanov opened the scoring for the Habs just before the midway point of the opening period and the lead held up until Shea Weber doubled Montreal’s advantage just before the midway point of the second period. Artturi Lehkonen added a 3rd goal for Montreal with just under eight minutes to play short-handed and although Edmonton pulled back a short-handed goal of their own to make it 3-1, that’s as close as the Oilers got as Montreal held on for the win. Jake Allen was solid in his Habs debut, stopping 25 of 26 shots to get the win.

The Vancouver Canucks will be out to snap a three-game losing streak after a 5-2 loss to Calgary last time out. Jake Virtanen opened the scoring for the Canucks just past the midway point of the opening period, but Calgary would take the lead in the latter stages of the 2nd, scoring a pair of goals 1:25 apart and made it 3-1 with a goal with two seconds to go in the middle frame. The Flames added a 4th just under seven minutes into the 3rd but Tyler Myers would pull a goal back for the Canucks with just under seven to go and did it short-handed. That was as close as the Canucks got though as Calgary iced the win with an empty net goal to seal the deal. Thatcher Demko took the loss, falling to 0-2-0 after allowing 4 goals on 31 shots in defeat.

Montreal is 4-1 in their last 5 road games and 2-5 in their last 7 games following a win while the under is 7-2-1 in their last 10 games overall. Vancouver is 1-4 in their last 5 games overall and 10-4 in their last 14 Wednesday games while the over is 5-0 in their last 5 Wednesday games. Montreal is 16-5 in the last 21 meetings between these two teams and 4-0 in the last 4 meetings between the two in Vancouver.

I’ve gone back and forth on this game in terms of the total as Vancouver’s been bad but this just screams under to me for some reason. I think we see an inspired effort from the Canadiens to keep their run going and it’s hard for the Canucks to be worse than they’ve played up to this point so I think they take a step forward here and contribute to an under as my free pick for this game but my stronger play is on the side and I have that available as a premium pick that you can find here.