Samuel Montembeault in front of the net tomorrow

Ahh, the goalkeeper waltz. It’s always interesting to try and guess which goalie will get which game.

Martin St-Louis has several factors to consider when making his decisions. Not leaving a goalie out for too long (for Jake Allen and Cayden Primeau, especially) is certainly an important one.

But for a coach, winning is more important.

That’s why, as you can see, Samuel Montembeault is often on duty these days. The Quebecer gives his club the best chance of winning.

Here’s how it’s been divided up since the holidays. We can see that 50% of the games go to the best goalkeeper.

• January 15, Avalanche: Allen
• January 13, Oilers: Montembeault
• January 11, Sharks: Montembeault
• January 10, Flyers (road) : Primeau
• January 6, Rangers: Montembeault
• January 4, Sabres: Allen
• January 2, Stars (road) : Montembeault
• December 31, Lightning (road) : Montembeault
• December 30, Panthers (road) : Allen
• December 28, Hurricanes (road) : Primeau

Since the beginning of the month, Samuel Montembeault hasn’t gone two games in a row without playing. He clearly has his coach’s confidence at the moment – and rightly so.

And now, tomorrow night, he’ll be the one in uniform.

We still don’t know which forwards will be available to play in front of him and whether Justin Barron will skip his turn again (that said, you don’t change a winning formula), but we do know that Monty will play.

This one was relatively easy to predict. After all, Allen played yesterday and it was clear that Monty would have one of the two back-to-back games (Wednesday in New Jersey, Thursday in Ottawa) to come.

The only chance of not seeing Montembeault tomorrow was if the coach had decided to put all his eggs in one basket to make sure of beating the Sens on Thursday.

But logically, he chose to play him on Wednesday against the Devils, who aren’t having a great season after all.

Note that I expect Montembeault to get Saturday night’s game in Boston. Does it make sense to think that Primeau could face the Sens on Thursday in Ottawa and that Allen could get the start next Tuesday, the 23rd, against the Sens at home? It’s rare for Primeau to play at the Bell Centre…

So I’m going to go out on a limb and predict Primeau, Montembeault and Allen for Thursday, Saturday and next Tuesday’s games. But we’ll see.

In gusto

– Reinforcement for the Jets.

– Patrick Kane is injured.

– Dustin Wolf recalled.

– What do you think?