MONTREAL— It’s Sidney Crosby attacking Jayden Struble, who’s a left-handed defenceman forced to play the right side.
Going one-on-one against the greatest player of a generation in your 78th NHL game is daunting enough, but this is another handicap for Struble to deal with.
It shows as Crosby enters the zone, backs Struble down and banks the puck behind himself back to Bryan Rust. The damage is done already when Rust finds Richard Rakell all alone in front for the goal that breaks the Montreal Canadiens on this night.
That makes it 4-2 for the Pittsburgh Penguins, dispiriting the Canadiens to the point that Jake Evans comes out after the game and suggests they just might have quit right then and there.
Considering five more goals go into their net without much resistance over the next 15 minutes and 20 seconds, we won’t argue with him.
It was a 9-2 loss for the Canadiens, a horrible letdown. An inexplicable one from a team that had played well enough to give itself a chance to wrap this five-game homestand with four wins and take some momentum into Winnipeg for a big Hockey Night in Canada matchup against the NHL-leading Jets on Saturday.
In the big picture, you chalk it up to the same immaturity that’s plagued the second-youngest team in the league since the start of the season.
The Canadiens have now lost 11 of 29 games by more than three goals, with their unparalleled ability to turn a small bleed into a full-on hemorrhage dominating the storyline in each one.
A goal goes in, and it just feels like two more are on their way, leaving Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis talking about “the chain falling off,” and assistant captain Brendan Gallagher saying what everyone watching this team must be thinking at this point.
“You say we’ve got to learn from it. We do,” said Gallagher in an exasperated tone. “But eventually you can only say it so long. You have to go out there and take action as a group. Just disappointing.”
It’s also so damn repetitive.
So, let’s zoom out from the big picture and zoom into the small one.
Go back to that back-breaking fourth goal — and to the three the Penguins scored before it — because it exposed a problem the Canadiens have no solution for.
The team has a gaping hole on the right side of its defence.
It’s been there all season, but it was widened when David Savard was missing from warmup and then ruled out of Thursday’s game with an upper-body injury.
He is the Canadiens’ only reliable and trustworthy right-handed defenceman.
It was clear at the end of the night, when the stat sheet revealed that Justin Barron — the only right-handed defenceman in the Canadiens lineup Thursday — played just 12:21 against the Penguins. Just as it was clear prior to the Canadiens becoming completely unglued in the third.
Before Struble allowed Crosby the space to start the play on Rakell’s goal, Mike Matheson made his third of three mistakes that led to Penguins goals.
The speedy left-hander made each one of them from the right side.
The first was on a Canadiens penalty kill, with Matheson in the space Savard usually occupies. He was positioned in such a way that he’d have to turn 180 degrees to his backhand side to block the passing lane the Penguins exposed, and he got caught watching it all develop.
On the second goal, Matheson made the type of complex play at the offensive blue line that should be avoided as a lefty playing the right side, and then, from the right side of his own blue line down to the goal line, he couldn’t stop Rust from driving around him and beating him to the net.
And on the third one, Matheson chose an easier play to make from his off side — a bank up the boards for an attempted zone exit — instead of a harder but better one that would’ve forced him to take the puck to his backhand and reverse it up the right side of the ice where there was more space.
It came back on the Canadiens and ended up in their net.
Kaiden Guhle, a lefty who’s been playing the right for more than half the season, struggled to make plays from his off side on Pittsburgh’s seventh and eighth goals. Just as Struble was crossed up on Pittsburgh’s sixth and ninth goals.
“It’s definitely easier on your strong side,” he said, “but you have to be able to do it on your off side.”
He does, Guhle does, and even Matheson does when Savard is out.
“It’s definitely not ideal, it’s not easy, it’s just what we’re dealing with right now,” said St. Louis. “We’re not the only team. Like, tonight, they had a pair with two lefties. It’s not ideal, but we’re trying to work with it.”
Savard is only listed as day-to-day, so he’ll come back soon enough and make it so that one less Canadiens defenceman is playing out of position.
But this is something they’ll have to continue to deal with for the foreseeable future.
Over the long term, Logan Mailloux and David Reinbacher can hopefully provide solutions. But for now, it’s hard for the Canadiens to find a stop-gap solution while the former develops his game in Laval and the latter recovers from knee surgery.
General manager Kent Hughes has been trying since the season started. But if finding a steady right-hander who’s available and not signed too long-term was easy, one would be here by now.
Meanwhile, there won’t be much focus on Hughes adding to the Canadiens from here to the March 7 trade deadline — especially after games like these — and there will be people clamouring for him to move Savard, who is playing out the final season of his contract.
The 34-year-old isn’t exactly having a banner season. He’d have to pick up his game considerably to net the Canadiens any type of value on the market.
But his value to them appears most obvious on this night.
“It hurts not having Savy,” said St. Louis. “Not just because he’s a righty, but also his presence.”
It’s a stabilizer the Canadiens could’ve used in that third period.
“He’s a vet guy back there that’s played in this league a long time,” said Guhle. “He’s calm, he’s collected, he’s always got the right thing to say to the young guys, to the whole group. He keeps it light, but he keeps it focused at the same time. When he’s out, it’s up to us to step up and fill that spot.”
Nobody was able to do that against the Penguins, leading to the ugliness we witnessed over the final period of the game.
“We were just all mixed up,” said Evans. “It’s like we just completely stopped playing, so it’s embarrassing and frustrating.”
