MONTREAL — It was the Canadiens’ best sequence of the game, leading to the opening goal and the seizure of much-needed momentum from a Tampa Bay Lightning team that came to the Bell Centre on a heater after having won nine of its last 11 games.
It started with a won faceoff by Alex Newhook, who immediately made his way over to the far side of the ice and opened himself up for the cross-ice pass David Savard delivered while Brendan Gallagher was setting up opposite Newhook in the slot. Newhook one-touched the puck to Gallagher, who one-timed it off Lightning goaltender Matt Tomkins, and there was Joel Armia to bat the puck in for his 15th goal of the season.
It was precision hockey. The kind the Canadiens have been working so hard to be able to execute over the last two seasons. The kind the Lightning have played for the better part of the past decade, making them the model franchise of the NHL.
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When former Lightning-superstar-turned-Canadiens-coach Martin St. Louis talks about his team’s good being really good, it’s a sequence like this one that he’s referring to. This one, and nearly every one that followed through a first period the Canadiens dominated at five-on-five, only served to justify how he feels.
What happened after, however, was a sample of how far the Canadiens still must come to make their bad far less punitive.
Take the goal they allowed to Steven Stamkos to make it 3-2 Lightning 7:58 into the second period, for example. Josh Anderson and Jesse Ylonen opted for a late line change with the puck rushing towards their net before Arber Xhekaj — who didn’t read how badly his team was outnumbered — overcommitted to Brandon Hagel on the boards and left Stamkos all alone in front for a tap-in.
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They compounded mistakes in a matter of seconds, and the Canadiens then piled several more on top of them before the period ended, creating a deficit not even the very best of their best hockey would be able to overcome.
Hence a 7-4 loss in the end, after Stamkos scored into an empty net.
“We shot ourselves in the foot,” said St. Louis.
He hasn’t had to say that much over the second half of this season, but he could’ve printed it to a t-shirt and worn that t-shirt to many of his post-game press conferences through the first half.
This was Game 75 of the campaign, and if you’re looking for the main reason the Canadiens were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention when it ended, it’s right there.
The players know, and knowing is half the battle.
“That’s the difference between teams that miss the playoffs and the really good teams in this league,” said Brendan Gallagher. “To be able to go through an 82-game season, you’re going to have to make sure that your floor is high and that you’re going to win games, win periods, win shifts when you might not feel your best. We had good energy, we had good jump, but that was just a matter tonight of not being as sharp as we have been.”
It’s not as if the Lightning played perfectly.
But when the ice tilted towards their end — as it only would for a team playing its sixth period in 24 hours — they simplified things and survived.
When they were chasing the Canadiens two periods prior, they still found a way to capitalize on their two best chances, never allowing their mistakes to be compounded.
The Canadiens are better now in that respect than they were three months ago.
But they still have another level to get to in order to raise their floor to where it needs to be, and that will continue to be their focus from here to the end.
“It’s just you’ve gotta be alert on the ice, you’ve gotta stay engaged mentally,” said St. Louis.
“Our floor has definitely risen this year,” he added, “but tonight, it kind of dropped a little bit in the second.
“But to me, I see it as a one-off, I don’t think it’s a trend. I don’t think so. I think we’ve been playing pretty solid for the most part. We haven’t had a period like that in a long time. It’s unfortunate to have that against that team, and I felt that we gave them a couple of gifts for sure. It’s not like they were coming end-to-end, breaking us down, we were making mental mistakes and, on top of that, we put them on the power play a lot. Everything that could go wrong in the second went wrong.”
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He liked the way the Canadiens fought back in the third.
Looking at the sequences that led to goals for Juraj Slafkovsky and Cole Caufield, and even the ones that didn’t lead to goals late in the game on the power play, there was more evidence of the growth they’ve experienced at the upper reach of their game.
The rest remains a work in progress.
