theathleticuk
Expectations were high for the Montreal Canadiens entering the season, with the team viewed as one on the rise. However, they are still a work in progress, learning the finer points that separate winning from losing in the NHL. That evolution was on full display during a demanding four-game road trip without captain Nick Suzuki and dynamic top-six winger Ivan Demidov. The Canadiens returned home with a perfect 4-0-0 record after a 5-2 win against the Dallas Stars on Thursday.
Before the trip, Montreal had surrendered a 3-1 third-period lead at home to the San Jose Sharks, eventually losing in overtime. They learned from that experience. In the following game in Chicago, they led 3-1 after two periods and won 4-1. They held a 2-0 lead entering the third in the Heritage Classic in Winnipeg and won 2-1. On Tuesday in St. Louis, they led 1-0 after 40 minutes and won 2-0. Against the Stars, they took a 4-2 lead into the third and sealed the victory.
Prior to Thursday’s game, Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis spoke at the team hotel about the urgency required to manage leads and close out games. His words proved almost prophetic. “For me, what drives urgency is deadlines,” he said. “If you look in the playoffs, it’s harder to come back in games because teams have urgency, they have a deadline. Now we’ve been in this situation from the start of the season, it seems like, with no real deadline. So, to me, these opportunities really show the maturity of your team, the mindset, because the deadline’s so far away. So you have to create that mentality, and it’s hard to create that mentality unless you have the repetitions. So that’s what we’re getting right now, where it helps us really elevate our maturity with the mindset.”
Maturity is what an evolving team seeks, and while the Canadiens’ lead management earlier in the trip yielded the desired results, it was not always perfect. Neither was the game in Dallas, but it came very close. Montreal gave up very little in the third period against the Stars, and when they did, goaltender Jakub Dobeš was there. Unlike Jacob Fowler in St. Louis, Dobeš was not asked to perform miracles because he had a mature team in front of him.
“I think in the second we kept our foot on the gas, didn’t sit back, tried to keep getting after them and keep going after the next goal, which was important,” said Canadiens forward Alex Newhook, who scored twice. “End of the second was probably not our best in terms of protecting a lead, but in the third, pretty solid. They didn’t get a lot of looks. To come in and regroup after the second and go back out and shut them down like that, it’s important for us.”
The ultimate moment of maturity came early in the third when Jake Evans was sent out for a defensive zone draw with Josh Anderson and Chris Kreider on his wings—not his usual line, but a situational assignment while protecting a lead. Evans won the draw, the puck moved to the offensive zone, and instead of forcing a pass on an odd-man rush, he held it and shot. The shot went wide, but the puck stayed in the zone, and Evans, Kreider, and Anderson cycled it, forcing the Stars’ line of Wyatt Johnston, Mikko Rantanen, and Jamie Benn to defend for an entire shift.
“That was a really good shift actually,” said Cole Caufield, who also scored twice. “They extended it and that kills time, that clock goes down pretty fast when those guys are doing that down there. It definitely gave us some more momentum in the third, and those guys have been doing it all year.”
Displaying maturity can be abstract, with grey areas between managing a game and playing it. Stripping a player of his instincts and asking him to solely manage a game is not healthy and does not necessarily lead to victory. With the Canadiens leading 4-1 midway through the second period, that grey area presented itself to defenceman Noah Dobson. As Montreal entered the Stars zone, Dobson saw an opportunity: only two Stars were back, and if he drove the net, it would create a numerical advantage. He took it, beat his man to the back post, but a Newhook pass that would have made it 5-1 was a little high. Instead, the puck went back to the Canadiens zone with Juraj Slafkovský forced to play defence, and Benn scored to make it 4-2.
It was a situation where Dobson had to decide if trying for a 5-1 lead was worth the risk or if managing a 4-1 lead with plenty of game left was the better play. It is a decision the Canadiens are still learning to make because it is such a grey area. “I feel like the line in that situation is if they have three guys (back) and it’s not a three-on-two, then I’m probably pulling out,” Dobson said. “But if I have a chance—and I beat the guy back door, the puck was just a little high—it’s all part of the game. It’s instincts and reads. Sometimes you make a bad read and you learn from it. Sometimes you make a good read and something bad happens anyways.”
What made that bad result off a good read inconsequential was how the Canadiens played after allowing the goal. They did not give the Stars a sniff at erasing the lead, and Dobeš stood tall whenever little chinks appeared in the lead-protecting armour. A mature team can overcome a bad result off a good read as long as the rest of the reads remain good. “It’s important to have the details and take care of the team playing the right way, but also not taking your foot off the gas,” Dobson said. “You’ve got to continue to play.”
Does this win or the perfect 4-0 road trip mean the Canadiens have reached maturity? Not necessarily. But are they a more mature team than when they left Montreal without their captain and a top offensive winger, coming off a very immature loss to the Sharks at home? Undoubtedly. “I think this was Game 12 tonight, and we played with a level of maturity as if we had a deadline,” St. Louis said after the Canadiens’ 13th game of the season. “I like it for the group that were in that mode already. It doesn’t guarantee wins, but it helps you win, and that’s what we did.”
They did it by manufacturing urgency without a deadline, something St. Louis sees as critical and something he discussed with his team before the game. That made the outcome even more gratifying and promising for the evolution of this young team. “It’s a mature mentality,” St. Louis said Thursday morning. “You don’t only do the real things when it counts the most. That’s a championship mindset. You want to be a champion? Behave like a champion today. We talk about that a lot.” It showed.
Originally reported by theathleticuk.