MONTREAL — It’s a bit too early in the season for repetitive storylines, but here we are.
The Montreal Canadiens lost Game 5 of 82 the same way they dropped Games 2 and 4: Failing to execute the coach’s game plan.
Martin St. Louis has been stressing for days about the deep game he wants his team to play. He re-emphasized its importance ahead of Thursday’s matchup with a Los Angeles Kings team that was playing for the second time in as many nights; a Kings team that came to the Bell Centre with its confidence in a fragile state after having allowed 14 goals over its last two games. And St. Louis said he was “very disappointed” about the Canadiens not heeding his advice in what turned out to be a 4-1 loss.
The coach ended the night by saying, “I’m definitely proactive, and it’s going to get fixed.”
He’s kept his top line of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky together despite underwhelming results at five-on-five, and he hasn’t touched his second one of Joel Armia, Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook despite them failing to generate any offence so far. He’s also passed on chances to make changes on defence, where the Canadiens have had inconsistent performances from shift to shift, let alone from game to game.
But St. Louis’s patience has probably run its course by now. Justifiably.
Even this early in the season.
St. Louis expects more from this group, and he should.
Sure, he brought up how young his team is as an explanation for the poor decision-making against the Kings.
“I think it’s a bit of a sign of youth,” he said before adding, “There’s many moments where it’s tempting to make a play and, when you’re young, it’s easy to get tempted.”
But St. Louis also knows that this team, which is relatively unchanged from the one he coached a season ago, has accumulated enough experience to know what to do when a downtrodden opponent comes to town.
The players know, too.
They know they should’ve been establishing their forecheck early on against the Kings, essentially jabbing them as much as possible instead of swinging for knockout blows in the opening round, and they are as disappointed in themselves as their coach is for not doing it.
Captain Nick Suzuki called it “an immature effort.”
After Jake Evans used the same word, we asked if it was the one the coach was using.
He said he hadn’t heard St. Louis saying it, nor had he heard it coming from Suzuki.
“It’s just the word that came to me,” Evans said.
At least everyone’s on the same page here. It’s best to know the problem before trying to fix it.
St. Louis said the same thing Suzuki did before and after the game — about turning over pucks trying to force plays, about giving the Kings life when they should have been extinguishing it — and both expressed an urgent desire to solve the issue.
Evans said it best, leaving the youth factor out of his analysis.
“It’s been quite a while for this rebuild now and it’s time to step up and know to win in this league it’s playing a simple game a lot of the time,” he said. “Then, eventually, you can start taking advantage of teams. It’s just something we’ve got to fix early here.”
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Evans’s line with Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson has been trying to fix it from the start, leading by example from Game 1 through the end of the Kings contest.
You can’t help but wonder if the other lines — specifically the top two — will remain intact after not following.
Jayden Struble, who was a healthy scratch for Thursday’s game, will all but certainly draw in for Saturday’s game against the New York Islanders. If not for Mike Matheson, who will be re-evaluated Friday morning after suffering an upper-body injury in the first period on Thursday, then probably for Arber Xhekaj.
Justin Barron picked up his game — and a beautiful goal to give the Canadiens a 1-0 lead 7:02 into the first period. Lane Hutson played 30:05 and did everything in his power to change the outcome. And David Savard, who was skating in his 800th game, had four shot attempts, two blocked shots, two hits, and probably played the best he has since the season started.
Now the Canadiens need to come together as a group and start playing the game that’s expected of them.
“We didn’t play to our identity, to our standards, whatever you will,” said St. Louis. “One of our biggest strengths is our forecheck, and when you try to make plays at the blue line when it’s not a three-on-two or a two-on-one, when we don’t have the numerical advantage on the other side of a play, then you afford the other team to not have to defend itself, to not have to go retrieve pucks under pressure.
“There’s nothing fun about chipping the puck in, but it’s part of the recipe to increase your percentages of winning a game.”
The Canadiens didn’t do it and lost this one to fall to 2-3-0 on their season. They lost the other ones the same way and will continue losing if they don’t adjust immediately.
