This was no ordinary win.
It was earned under practically impossible circumstances — at altitude, less than 24 hours after an all-out effort in a different time zone, to close out a ridiculous week against a Colorado Avalanche team that had won 10 of its last 12 and scored at least five goals in each of its last four home games, and with two key players unavailable because they were suffering from the flu. Considering all that, what it means for the Montreal Canadiens is much more than just two points in the standings.
Those meant a lot, too, no doubt. They brought the Canadiens to within one point of the Ottawa Senators (who are currently occupying the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference) and there’s no downplaying how much that matters.
But it pales in comparison to the growth the team experienced over the last seven days.
It started in Florida, where the Canadiens shut out the reigning Stanley Cup champion Panthers 4-0 last Saturday to help Jakub Dobes earn his first win in his first NHL game in dramatic fashion. And before it ended with Dobes backstopping them to his second win against the 2022 Cup champion Avalanche, the Canadiens beat the 2020 and 2021 champion Tampa Bay Lightning and 2023 champion Vegas Golden Knights.
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If not for Blackhawks goaltender Arvid Soderblom stopping 38 of their 40 shots in Chicago on Friday, the Canadiens would have swept what was arguably the hardest road trip they’ve ever been on.
But that loss took nothing away from the accomplishment.
“I think we’re a young team that’s building something,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said to reporters at Ball Arena.
It was an undeniable statement, especially considering their tumultuous start to the season.
The Canadiens looked like a team regressing in every way through those first six weeks, and they did little to reverse that perception as the end of November neared.
But it’s clear now — after winning 10 of their last 15 since Dec. 2 — they took a step back to take two forward, and it’s given them something so much more valuable than just points in the standings.
“Maturity isn’t something you just buy,” said St. Louis. “It comes with experience, it comes with lessons, it comes with discussions, it comes with a lot of things. I find we have a lot of consistency in this department from game to game and throughout a game.”
That the Canadiens had it between Friday’s loss in Chicago and Saturday’s win in Colorado was irrefutable evidence.
Think about that ridiculous turnaround for a second.
No, wait. Think about the absurd structure of this entire trip first.
Back-to-back games in Sunrise and Tampa before traveling to the Pacific time zone in Vegas to play for a third time in four days. Then off to the Central time zone for Friday’s game in Chicago before dropping back to Mountain time to play the Avalanche Saturday.
And yet, the Canadiens found a way to persevere. Even without Patrik Laine and David Savard, who were too sick to play. Even after they went down 1-0 to a rested team that hadn’t lost all season when leading after one period.
The Canadiens had the odds completely stacked against them going into the second but outshot the Avalanche 20-15 from that point on.
They tied the game when Cole Caufield scored his 21st of the season in the 14th minute of the third period, and they clung to that tie over the final 1:44 of regulation — even as they killed off a holding penalty Kaiden Guhle didn’t deserve.
Dobes made brilliant saves, including one on an Artturi Lehkonen breakaway as the seconds ticked away in overtime. And after Caufield scored on the first shot of the shootout, he stoned Jonathan Drouin and Mikko Rantanen.
Then Kirby Dach put the game away with his fourth goal in six career shootout attempts.
His confidence was one of the things the Canadiens pocketed on this road trip.
The team desperately needed it to rise — with Dach struggling so mightily through his first two-and-a-half months coming off a knee injury that limited him to less than five periods last season — and it did with three goals, four points and Saturday’s shootout heroics.
The Canadiens needed a backup goaltender who could inspire hope he could lighten Samuel Montembeault’s workload and deliver wins, and they gained one with Dobes’s emergence on this trip.
But the main thing the Canadiens got over this past week was reinforcement in their internal belief that they could not only hang with any team in this league but also beat them.
Each win against the best of the best galvanized the group.
Perhaps none more so than this one against Colorado.
The excuses to lose it were baked in for the Canadiens before it even started, but they refused to take them.
“It would be easy to be satisfied when you’re three and one,” said St. Louis.
But he, and they, wanted this last one badly enough to dig in deeper than they have all season.
Even without Laine, and the Canadiens running on fumes, the coach cut his bench down to just nine forwards over the course of the third period to secure at least one point.
Michael Pezzetta was playing just his second game since Oct. 27 and St. Louis wasn’t going to expose him to making a mistake out of rust over the final 22 minutes. Juraj Slafkovsky wasn’t playing well enough and St. Louis wasn’t going to risk putting him on the ice in the final 16 minutes.
Emil Heineman just didn’t have a line to play on after the 12th minute of the third period expired, and that was just what it had to be.
The Swedish rookie watched from the bench as the Canadiens poured their guts out to win.
And it’s not as if it’s about to get much easier moving forward.
But the Canadiens appear to be welcoming that reality.
“It’s a big difference between not eating and being hungry,” said St. Louis, “and right now we’re hungry.”
They’ll feast on the points, and on everything else their strong play is giving them right now.
