It's not very easy to draw any definitive conclusions off the Canadiens 4-0 win in Florida on Thursday night because they were not playing against an NHL team.

When Panthers management has clearly waved the white flag on this season, stripping the team down to its very core of Dimitry Kulikov, Stephen Weiss and David Booth, how are the players expected to care?

Tomas Vokoun certainly didn't seem to care in allowing two goals on the first three shots he faced. Weiss played just about the quietest 21:51 you can play. And so on and so on.

But just because the Panthers are in a state of utter disarray doesn't mean the Canadiens playing a decisive 60 minutes of hockey should be totally dismissed.

Up 2-0 before the game was 10 minutes old, the Canadiens did not fall back into their usual prevent defence. That's a plus.

Carey Price made 30 saves for his seventh shutout of the season, one he could have finished in his sleep. It was also his 30th win, a far cry from his 13 of last season when he was winning just once every three starts. This year, he's batting .545.

If you want to nit-pick, the Canadiens drew only one power play for the fourth time in their last seven games. There isn't much point having a great power play if it never gets on the ice. But that's about it.

Eller line building confidence

The rest is positive, and the headline of positivity concerns Andrei Kostitsyn and the chemistry he's found playing with that guy in the picture. The guy who began the season with about as much pressure as you can hand a 21-year-old kid. The guy who has gone through the Jacques Martin school of hard knocks and looks as though he's approaching graduation. The guy who looks mighty good when he's playing with confidence.

Yes, it's only been five games, but Lars Eller and Kostitsyn appear to have found something here. Kostitsyn has points in each of the five games they've played together with Travis Moen on the opposite wing, totalling three goals and four assists over that span. Eller has two of his five goals on the season in the same span to go with two assists, with Thursday's two-point night marking his second multi-point game of the season.

But to me, the most striking aspect of Eller's night was his 8-for-13 performance in the faceoff circle. That included four faceoffs against Florida's top line, and Eller won them all. It also included five faceoffs in the defensive zone, with Eller winning three. His total number of faceoffs taken was second only to Tomas Plekanec, and his eight victories were a team-high.

In addition to that, David Desharnais was number three on the list with 12 faceoffs taken, winning half of them. Four of his draws were in the defensive zone as well, though he only won one of them. He also scored another goal, giving him two in the past five games to go with an assist.

Meanwhile, Scott Gomez was called upon to take only nine faceoffs on the night, winning four, and he was 1-for-3 on defensive zone draws. He got no points, and has two assists over that five game span.

A tactical shift 

I point it out only because it appears Martin is trusting his two rookies on the road more often of late, whereas he was very reluctant to do so before in faceoff situations where a mismatch could occur.

In the five games since the current Eller line was formed it's been sent out for 19 defensive zone faceoffs, and Eller's won 11 of them for an impressive 57.9 per cent success rate. Desharnais has taken 13 defensive zone faceoffs over the same span and not fared nearly as well, winning only five, 38.4 per cent (he's clicking at an inhuman 72.7 per cent rate everywhere else on the ice). But that's still better than Gomez, who was won just eight of 21 defensive zone draws in the last five games, a 38.1 per cent success rate.

This is a good sign for the home stretch, because Martin needs an alternative to his go-to centre in defensive zone situations, Plekanec. He also needs an alternative to Gomez, period, because once again Thursday night his line produced nothing, though Max Pacioretty rang one off the post in the third on a partial breakaway.

Over the past five games, Eller has four points in 53:57 of ice time, Desharnais has three points in 48:54 of ice time, while Gomez has two assists in 91:19 of ice time.

Something's got to give at some point, and Martin's willingness to send his two rookie centres out for regular faceoff work on the road suggests he realizes it.