Penalties prove costly for Canadiens in lopsided loss to Wild

MONTREAL — It’s 15:46 into the second period of a game the Montreal Canadiens have been chasing since its start, and it’s only six minutes after Tanner Pearson scores to narrow the Minnesota Wild’s lead to two goals, when Juraj Slafkovsky does something that can’t be excused.

While the Canadiens are set up in the offensive zone, and right as they’re finally gaining some traction on a power play that’s failed to gain much of anything since the season began in Toronto last week, Slafkovsky dashes through coverage in the high slot and knocks Wild forward Marcus Johansson’s stick flying.

Slafkovsky spends the next 1:36 in the penalty box for interference, praying his mistake won’t prove costly, but his prayers go an unanswered when Kirill Kaprizov buries a power-play goal to make it 4-1 for the Wild.

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Where it gets really interesting is where Slafkovsky finds himself 90 seconds after coming out of the box. The penalty he took on Johansson was his second offensive-zone infraction of the game, it was Montreal’s fourth penalty of the night taken over 140 feet away from their own net and, after Kaprizov made him—and them—pay for it. He could easily be stapled to the Canadiens’ bench rather than put back on the ice for an end-of-period power play.

But Martin St. Louis chooses not to make an example of him.

“It’s a balance early in the year, but yeah, it’s a penalty you probably don’t need at that time,” the Canadiens’ coach explains afterwards. “I felt that we’re taking so many penalties, I feel like I’m benching everyone right now.

“I think Slaf’s a young player, he’s going to learn from that. I think he’s just trying to disrupt—he’s a strong kid, stick goes flying, and I’ve done that play and sometimes they call it, sometimes they don’t. Seems like in today’s game, when you make a play on somebody’s stick, whether it breaks or flies out of his hands, it’s a penalty. So we just have to be aware of that.”

It’s understandable St. Louis isn’t going to punish a 19-year-old sophomore for a team-wide trend, and choosing not to punish him is certainly indicative of his ability to always maintain perspective on where the Canadiens are at in their rebuild. This is still a young team more concerned with development than results and, within that context, benching the team’s youngest player rather than giving him a chance to make up for his mistake on the ice goes against that grain.

But St. Louis explained a principle of his to us when we sat down with him for a one-on-one interview prior to the start of the season, and it’s a principle that appeared to be guiding him during an embarrassing 5-2 loss that saw the Canadiens give up two shorthanded goals within 37 seconds and take 10 minor penalties to completely break whatever rhythm they were hoping to establish to bounce back. He talked to us about the power of letting the team correct itself before he intervenes and, right now, the Canadiens need to correct themselves.

They didn’t do it as St. Louis hoped they would during the game, but they know they need to do it now.

“It’s our job,” said Brendan Gallagher. “That’s on us to handle and take care of, and it’s something that happens in this locker room. So we’ll (handle it) as a team. It’s not one guy right now, it’s all of us right now that are responsible for this, so we’re going to take care of it so it doesn’t get to that point (of St. Louis needing to intervene).”

That is part of the process the Canadiens need to go through if they want to continue on the right path.

They took seven minor penalties against the Maple Leafs in their 6-5 loss on opening night, they took another six in a 3-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks Saturday, they upped the ante against the Wild and need figure this out before they go any further.

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The rest is cleaning up all the other foibles that led Tuesday’s game to appear much more lopsided than the final score actually indicated.

“I thought we got outworked early,” said Sean Monahan. “We’ve gotta manage the puck better coming through the neutral zone, and I think we can be a team that can forecheck a lot harder. The penalties don’t help us, but we can step up a lot.”

In the few moments the Canadiens did step up in this game, Marc-Andre Fleury kept them at bay.

It was the 38-year-old goaltender’s 21^st start at the Bell Centre, and possibly his last. He had over 80 family members and friends there who saw him make a windmill save on Johnathan Kovacevic and two highlight-reel stops on Cole Caufield before collecting his 13^th win in his home province, and they were all on their feet—along with Canadiens fans left in the building—giving him a standing ovation for his nomination as first star of the game.

“I didn’t want to stay too long on the ice for that, and it went by so fast,” Fleury said, “But I wanted to keep a snapshot of that in my head. I’ll always remember that moment. I was always a Canadiens fan, and I was happy to hear them clapping for me.”

We’re sure he was happy the Canadiens made his night relatively easy, too.

“We didn’t really give ourselves a chance,” said St. Louis.

You could say that the Canadiens didn’t have much of one starting the game as they did—disjointedly, lost and searching for themselves in the absence of Kirby Dach, who suffered a season-ending knee injury less than five periods into the campaign.

But hey, the Wild came into this one with their best defenceman (Jared Spurgeon) out, with one of their best forwards (Matthew Boldy) out, and only capable of playing 11 forwards due to cap complications caused by an injury defenceman Alex Goligoski suffered at Monday’s practice, and they managed just fine.

Were the Canadiens out of sync to start without Dach, and with changes to three of their four lines? Sure.

Might they have sorted that out as the night wore on had they not shot themselves in the foot so many times? Even with Kaiden Guhle gone for the final minute of the second period, and for all of the third, it was at least possible.

Certainly less so after Slafkovsky took that costly interference penalty on Johansson.

“You can have any game plan you want, but you can’t execute it taking that many penalties,” said St. Louis.

He didn’t necessarily have to bench anybody for the Canadiens to realize it, even if he would’ve been justified to do exactly that.

But St. Louis won’t let it go again if this trend continues Saturday, when the Washington Capitals visit the Bell Centre.

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