Canadiens must tap into reserve tank after energy-sapping loss vs. Kings
Clearly stuck in neutral, the Canadiens crawled into Los Angeles on Wednesday. The result was a 6-3 loss to the Kings that made you wonder just how this team is going to possibly stay in the playoff race.
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It was last Wednesday in Brossard, Que., that Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis essentially admitted his tired, banged-up team was in survival mode.
That was the same day it was announced Kaiden Guhle had surgery to repair a torn quadricep muscle suffered in a loss to the Winnipeg Jets a night prior. That loss to the Jets was Montreal’s third in a row, and with upcoming games against the Minnesota Wild, Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks, Los Angeles Kings, New Jersey Devils and Tampa Bay Lightning leading to the 4 Nations Face-Off, St. Louis qualified his team’s next segment as “a chase to the break.”
What the Canadiens haven’t found a way to do since he said that is sprint.
They were moving in slow motion in a loss to the Wild last Thursday, leaving St. Louis talking about how they lacked “juice.” And after a sloppy loss in Anaheim Sunday and a squeaker of a win in San Jose Tuesday, they were crawling in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
The result: A 6-3 loss to the Kings that made you wonder just how this team is going to possibly steal points away from the Devils and Lightning in Super Bowl Weekend matinees to salvage this segment and stay in the playoff race.
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Those teams play in fifth gear and the Canadiens can’t seem to get out of neutral right now.
They were in park (with the emergency brake jacked all the way up) at the start of Wednesday’s game — allowing a goal and eight shots to get to Jakub Dobes in the first 1:39 of play — and every time they revved their engine, they then slipped off the clutch and left the engine sputtering as it ground to a stall.
Hey, give the Kings credit. They are the NHL’s best home team and looked like it from start to finish. They appeared rested, fresh and ready for a Canadiens team that played in Northern California the night before, and they asserted themselves accordingly.
As a result, the Kings never appeared to be seriously threatened by Montreal’s advances.
Their first lead was erased on a fluke shot Mike Matheson banked off Drew Doughty and Darcy Kuemper, but they got their second one on a Warren Foegele penalty shot early in the second period.
Brandt Clarke made it 3-1 in the 15th second of the third period before Alex Carrier sifted one through for the Canadiens to narrow the gap once more.
But Kevin Fiala responded just six minutes later to make it 4-2 Kings. And he added a second goal just 35 seconds after Logan Mailloux got the Canadiens back to within one.
Trevor Moore’s empty-netter with 2:30 to play left the Canadiens doubled over.
“Honestly, I think everyone gave the most they had tonight,” Matheson told reporters in attendance.
But the most the Canadiens had wasn’t nearly enough.
The Canadiens haven’t had nearly enough to give for over two weeks, with the flu rolling through the team, with fatigue from their insane post-Christmas schedule settling in, with important players like Guhle and Emil Heinemen suffering injuries and others — like Josh Anderson and David Savard — playing hurt. And if they don’t dig deep into the reserve tank this weekend, they’ll spend the 12-day break thinking about how they destroyed all the work they did to dig themselves out of the NHL’s basement.
This team has the heart, as evidenced by its remarkable run from mid-November to mid-January to undo a start that saw it lose 13 of its first 17 games.
But the legs are wobbly and it’s hard to imagine them pumping at full capacity against any team, let alone against two burners like the ones they’ll face at the Bell Centre Saturday and Sunday.
We’ll see what the Canadiens are made of.
Wins would give them a .500 record over their “chase to the break,” and that would be a miraculous outcome when you consider how they’ve looked in these games.
But they don’t stand a chance of winning those games if they look the way they did in Los Angeles Wednesday.
