MONTREAL — The most remarkable play we saw Saturday night at Bell Centre came towards the end of the first period, with the Montreal Canadiens already ahead 2-0 on a tired Washington Capitals team that had played, and won, in Toronto the night before.
Canadiens rookie defenceman Lane Hutson gathered the puck next to his own net, curled around the cage and as he crossed his goal line and approached the bottom of the left faceoff circle, he looked up. What he saw on the opposite side of the ice was Brendan Gallagher on a go route.
So Hutson threw a Hail Mary.
He turned to his forehand at the hash marks and lofted a puck that traveled roughly 100 feet in the air and landed in Gallagher’s hand inside the opposing blue line and behind the Capitals defence. Gallagher put the puck down, came in on Capitals goaltender Logan Thompson and took a backhand shot.
The shot looked to be going wide anyway, but it nicked Thompson’s pad and rolled harmlessly behind the net.
The most remarkable offensive play of the night, a play we simply don’t see very often, if ever, in the NHL, shouldn’t have even counted as a shot on goal.
“We had so many chances to extend our lead, and once they tied it, to take the lead back, and couldn’t capitalize,” Gallagher said after a 4-2 loss. “That’s the frustrating part.”
See, Gallagher had another breakaway in the third period, after the Capitals had tied the score, so that’s why he mentioned the chance to take the lead back because it was his chance. But captain Nick Suzuki, Josh Anderson and Jayden Struble all had breakaways in the third period. None of them scored.
This is a problem with no real solution, aside from scoring on those breakaways. The fact those breakaways happened is the process part. All the details in your game are meant to produce those breakaways. But process can’t score on those breakaways, and when you don’t score and lose the game as a result, you take the loss and move on.
This was the best the Canadiens played in their three games this week, and it was the only one they lost.
“The lesson, it would be easy to say it’s we should finish our chances, but every player has the intention of finishing their chances,” coach Martin St. Louis said. “I think the lesson is to wake up tomorrow and keep going because there were some good things.”
St. Louis was serene after this loss, a stark contrast to how he felt after the last time the Canadiens lost to the Capitals, in Washington on Halloween night, a loss in which they gave up three third-period goals, just like they did Saturday night.
That night in Washington, St. Louis was as angry as he’s ever been as Canadiens coach. He referred his team throwing up all over itself four times, and the next day, he put his players through a punishing bag skate.
The Canadiens are practicing Sunday morning, and there will assuredly be no bag skate, despite the circumstances of this loss being similar to that loss in Washington.
The big difference between the two games five weeks apart was a sequence in the second period when it looked as though the Canadiens were losing their grip on a 2-0 lead, with the Capitals buzzing around their zone and a goal feeling inevitable. They were reeling and were rescued by a TV timeout after Sam Montembeault froze the puck.
St. Louis usually doesn’t address his team during TV timeouts, but he did this time.
“I just said we’ve got to get the momentum back,” he said.
When play resumed, the Canadiens spent the following shift in the offensive zone. They did the same thing on the next shift, and the shift after that, and the one after that, right up until Jake Evans drew a slashing penalty on Lars Eller heading into the next TV timeout.
All that offensive zone time did not result in a single shot on goal for the Canadiens, let alone a goal, and that’s their biggest problem right now, converting that good offence into actual goals.
But it’s far less than the problems that plagued them on Halloween night.
“You’re going to lose momentum in a game, but I find that we’re starting to do a good job to get it back. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee a goal, but we’re getting better at it,” St. Louis said. “I think we correct ourselves a little quicker. I feel there’s stretches in the past where we’d go seven, eight, nine minutes where we just couldn’t gain the momentum back. We were having a lot more actions that help the other team, meaning turnovers, or trying to be cute.
“At some point, when it happens for three or four minutes, one line has just got to go, ‘Hey, we’ve got to regulate right now. We’ve got to regulate this.’ So it’s about probably simplifying a little bit, getting a deep shift, and I think we’re maturing in that department. I think it’s helping us to not lose the momentum for so long.”
The rested Canadiens failed to take advantage of a tired opponent Saturday night, which has been a theme this season. They failed to capitalize on their numerous chances to extend their lead and put the game away, another theme.
But the way the Canadiens performed against the top-scoring team in the league and one of the stingier defensive teams was also a trend, except it was a positive one, despite the result.
The Canadiens have grown since that bag skate in Washington, they have matured. And while a fully mature team would have won this game, would have not allowed the Capitals to hang around, would have buried a tired team early and not allowed it to get life in the third period, no one would ever suggest the Canadiens are fully mature. What everyone wants to see from this team this season is growth, and while that has at times been difficult to see, we seem to be seeing it now.
The Canadiens had a chance to win a third game in a row for the first time this season, something they did only once at the very end of last season, and they failed to do that.
You can choose to see that as the bottom line. That’s your prerogative.
But after the game in Washington, I spoke to Suzuki, and he was despondent. I asked him about offseason comments when he said he was looking forward to the Canadiens getting back to winning ways and mistakes no longer being tolerated, and how none of that was happening for his team. He didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t really know what to say about that,” he said then.
After the game Saturday, Suzuki was asked to contrast how he felt after this loss compared to the one in Washington and how he feels his team is different from the one in Washington, and he was not despondent.
He was excited.
“I felt a lot worse in Washington. Those breakaways and scoring chances that we had, I feel like we could have easily won. I feel in Washington, we didn’t really feel that way. That’s the difference,” he said. “I think we’re a really good team right now. Guys are playing well. For me, I think we could have easily won the game, it just didn’t go our way, so we can’t really think about it too much. I think we’re really rolling.”
That might be just a tad too excited, but the Canadiens are 6-5-1 in their last 12 games. It’s far from perfect, but there are signs of maturing, signs of growth, and if Suzuki feels that excited about how his team is playing, then there’s some meaning in that, as well.
Because how he felt after that game in Washington was not healthy for that process of maturity and growth. How he felt after this game, as exaggerated as it might have been, was far healthier.
(Photo of Pierre-Luc Dubois falling on Canadiens goalie Sam Montembeault: David Kirouac / Imagn Images)
