David Reinbacher Performs Brilliantly In Rocket’s Overtime Victory

The Habs’ top defensive prospect has been steadily getting better and more comfortable every game since he returned from a broken finger at the end of October but had yet to make an impact that really stood out amongst his teammates until Friday night. The main reason for that is that he had been very quiet in offensive situations through his first 8 games of the year. Heading into Friday’s matchup against the Senators, Reinbacher had just 3 assists in 8 games on the stat sheet, playing a very quiet game for the most part.

On Friday, Reinbacher took command of the game and showed that his offensive abilities are still there. He got his first point of the game midway through the first period, after helping set up Luke Tuch on the point for a shot that would deflect in off Will Dineen in front of the net for the Rocket forward’s first goal of the season to tie the game at 1.

It was during the 2nd period when it would become Reinbacher’s turn to get his first goal of the campaign. His goal came on a play when the Rocket hemmed the Senators deep in their zone for a good 3 seconds before Sean Farrell sent the puck over to Reinbacher, who shot a perfectly placed wrist shot from the right circle into the net. The goal would give the Rocket the lead for the first time of the game, putting them up 2-1. Prior to the goal, Reinbacher had a few chances to get his first goal on this shift, so it was clearly a very well-deserved goal for the now 21-year-old defenseman.

Reinbacher didn’t have any other points, but he continued to be a presence at both ends of the ice as he created quite a few offensive chances from the blue line, or even one situation where he pinched on the power play and took charge of setting up a prime scoring chance. It really seemed like his first goal of the season gave the defender more confidence to take advantage of his skating ability and go up to try to create more offence. 

Despite the offensive chances continuing pretty much the entire 2nd period for Reinbacher and the Rocket, he would be much more conservative in the 3rd period, playing a defensive game to help protect the 3-2 lead. Unfortunately, this led to a scare in the final minute of the game, where he slid to block a shot, which hit him straight in his right palm and made him go down in pain. To make matters worse, as he blocked the shot and went down, it left Senators forward Arthur Kaliyev wide open to put in the game-tying goal to send the game to overtime. 

Had Reinbacher been more careful and had his hand closed on his stick, the injury scare likely wouldn’t have happened, and maybe also that goal could have been prevented. Luckily, he was able to just ice his hand and not miss a shift, as the Habs prospect went right back on the ice a few minutes later for a shift in overtime.

During his overtime shift, he wasn’t able to create any big offensive chances, but he and his teammates held control of the puck almost the entire shift. This also helped lead to defenseman Adam Engstrom getting the game winner on a weird play where the Senators’ goaltender, Mads Sogaard, was out of position after a Laurent Dauphin end-to-end chance left him scrambling, and Alex Belzile fed the Rocket defender for the easy goal.

The Rocket won their first game of the year in overtime, and Reinbacher finished the night with a goal and an assist without a serious injury on his block leaves for a pretty good night for the Habs prospect. Hopefully, Reinbacher can carry that momentum that he built on Friday into Saturday’s game when the Rocket take on the Senators again at 3:00 pm ET. Head over to our website to listen to the official audio feed of today’s game with Vincent Demuy, and Cedrik Blondin.