MONTREAL – It's too early in the season for repetitive storylines, but here we are.
The Montreal Canadians lost Game 5 of 82 the same way they lost Games 2 and 4: by not executing 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 playing for the second time in as many nights; A Kings team that came to Bell Heart with fragile confidence after allowing 14 goals in its last two games. And St. Louis said he was “very disappointed” that the Canadiens didn't follow his advice in what turned out to be a 4-1 loss.
The coach ended the night by saying, “I'm definitely proactive and this is going to get fixed.”
He's kept his top line of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovsky together despite disappointing five-on-five results, and hasn't touched his second of Joel Armia, Kirby Dach, and Alex Newhook despite their failure to generate any offense so far. He's also passed up opportunities to make changes on defense, where the Canadiens have had inconsistent performances from shift to shift, let alone game to game.
But St. Louis' patience has probably already run out. Justifiably.
Even at this point in the season.
St. Louis expects more from this group, and they should.
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Sure, he mentioned how young his team is as an explanation for the poor decision making against the Kings.
“I think it's a little bit of a sign of youth,” he said before adding, “There are a lot of times when it's tempting to make a play, and when you're young, it's easy to give into temptation.”
But St. Louis also knows that this team, virtually 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 it too.
They know they should have set their early management early against the Kings, essentially hitting them as much as possible instead of throwing knockout punches in the first round, and they're as disappointed in themselves as their coach is for not doing so.
Captain Nick Suzuki called it “an immature effort.”
After Jake Evans used the same word, we asked him if it was the one the coach was using.
He said he hadn't heard St. Louis say it, nor had he heard it coming from Suzuki.
“It's just the word that came to me,” Evans said.
At least here everyone is on the same page. It is better to know the problem before trying to fix it.
St. Louis said the same thing as Suzuki before and after the game (about turning over pucks trying to force plays, about giving the Kings life when they should have extinguished it) and both expressed an urgent desire to solve the problem.
Evans said it best, leaving the youth issue out of his analysis.
“It's been a while for this rebuild and it's time to take a step forward and know that to win in this league is to play an easy game most of the time,” he said. “Then, over time, you can start taking advantage of the equipment. It is something that we have to solve soon here.”
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Evans' line with Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson has been trying to fix it from the beginning, leading by example from Game 1 to the end of the Kings' contest.
You can't help but wonder if the other lines, specifically the first two, will remain intact after not following them.
Jayden Struble, who was healthy for Thursday's game, will almost certainly be tied for Saturday's game against the New York Islanders. If it wasn't for Mike Matheson, who will be re-evaluated Friday morning after suffering an upper-body injury in the first period on Thursday, then it probably would be for Arber Xhekaj.
Justin Barron picked up his game and scored a beautiful goal to give the Canadiens a 1-0 lead at 7:02 of the first period. Lane Hutson played 30:05 and did everything in his power to change the outcome. And David Savard, skating in his 800th game, had four shot attempts, two blocked shots, two hits and probably played the best he has since the season began.
Now the Canadiens need to come together as a group and start playing the game that is expected of them.
“We don't play with our identity, with our standards, whatever it is,” St. Louis said. “One of our biggest strengths is our front-end management, and when you try to make plays on the blue line when it's not a three-on-two or a two-on-one, when we don't have a numerical advantage on the other side of a play, then you allow the another team not having to defend, not having to go recover pucks under pressure.
“There's nothing fun about putting the puck in, but it's part of the recipe for increasing your percentage of winning a game.”
The Canadiens didn't and lost this one to fall to 2-3-0 on their season. They lost the others in the same way and will continue to lose if they do not adjust immediately.
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