Canadiens, Anderson searching for answers to scoring woes after loss to Flames

MONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens had 75 shot attempts — 14 of them right from the most dangerous part of the ice — and they had 37 scoring chances but only managed one goal in Tuesday’s loss to the Calgary Flames, and none of them were more frustrated about it than Josh Anderson.

He had two shots on net. Both of them came with less than two minutes to play, including one from 11 feet in front of Jacob Markstrom, who ripped the puck away with his glove and extended Anderson’s misery. The Canadiens were desperate for a goal, down 2-1 and skating six-on-four as Andrew Mangiapane looked on helplessly from the penalty box, and Anderson couldn’t provide it.

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He missed the net with three other looks earlier, and striking the crossbar in the second period had him shaking his head, smiling in disbelief, and looking skyward as if he was asking a higher power for some kind of break.

There is no player in the NHL more deserving of one, except for perhaps Washington’s T.J. Oshie, who is the only other player in the league with a higher expected-goals ratio and still searching for his first marker of the season.

Oshie has gone 14 games without seeing the puck enter the back of the net off his stick — or any of his body parts.

This was Game 16 for Anderson, and he was once again so close to breaking that goose egg once and for all.

Captain Nick Suzuki joked afterwards that with the way things are going for him—with quality shots being snuffed out or smacking iron — his first goal will probably end up being the result of a fanned shot.

If you believe in things evening out over the course of a season, and Suzuki said he does, Anderson has a lot of goals coming his way.

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And the Canadiens? Suzuki believes a result like the one in Tuesday’s game will be redeemed at some point, with the Canadiens filling the net in a contest that sees them fail to generate half as many quality scoring chances as they did against the Flames.

Anderson is praying it goes that way, and that he scores all of them.

He joked he may as well go left-handed at this point, spoke to the importance of keeping his sense of humour about him in this difficult moment and then earnestly offered that a night like this will haunt him.

“I’m going to be very frustrated going to sleep tonight and looking back on tonight’s game,” the big right winger said. “But it’s a new day (Wednesday), work on my shot in practice, worry about scoring goals in practice, and that’s all you can worry about, and you try to get better.

“I would probably say for the first 12 games, I was still feeling OK and not worrying about scoring because I knew it was going to come,” Anderson continued. “But over the last couple of games, with Boston, Detroit, Van, and now Calgary, when you get two or three Grade-A scoring chances and still nothing, it’s frustrating. And the fact that you can’t help your team win? That’s painful.”

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He’s not the only bruised Canadien right now.

Cole Caufield, who has five goals on the season, only has one at five-on-five — a situation in which he generated six of his eight shots on net and eight of his 11 attempts against the Flames.

Rafael Harvey-Pinard has just 11 shots on net in 13 games this season, but he has 25 shot attempts and 19 scoring chances. He, too, is searching for his first goal after scoring 14 in 34 games as a rookie last season. And he, too, had his chances — and missed them — against Calgary.

Juraj Slafkovsky, Jake Evans and Jesse Ylonen each had chances, as well, and all three of them are still stuck on one goal for the season.

All Martin St. Louis — who made a Hall of Fame career out of burying his chances —can do for them is lend some emotional support.

“I think as a coach, I’ve been in those times where it’s just not going in,” he said. “So, it’s just have conversations, stay light, lighten up the conversation, and try to pick them up. That’s about it because the effort is there, the chances are there, (and) sometimes the game is just hard.”

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It’s not as if St. Louis can structure a practice Wednesday to solve this particular issue.

“We’ll look at video, but what you’re talking about is more individual stuff,” he confirmed. “Could be puck positioning, could be deception, there’s a lot of things. Could be how fast can you let it go? But that’s more individualized…”

The skills and development coaches will do what they can to help at practice and in the video room, but they can’t score the goals for these players in games.

And these players can’t allow frustration over the lack of results to blur how healthy their process has been in general, and how good it was against the Flames.

Easier said than done.

For Anderson, who scored 21 goals last season but could’ve scored more if not for injuries, it’s particularly hard. He’s putting a lot of pressure on himself.

“There’s no excuses this year,” the 29-year-old said. “Just gotta find a way.”

Next chance comes Thursday, against the Vegas Golden Knights.

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