Canadiens must work to regain nearly non-existent confidence
Try as they might have, the Canadiens couldn’t seem to get out of their own way. They also couldn’t string enough passes together, couldn’t make enough plays and, despite popular opinion, it had nothing to do with their effort.
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With eight minutes left in the most unwatchable game the Montreal Canadiens have played this season, David Savard took a bump from Michael Bunting and went crashing into teammate Alex Newhook.
If there was one second that summed up how this night went for the Canadiens, this was it.
Try as they might have, they couldn’t seem to get out of their own way.
The Canadiens also couldn’t string enough passes together, couldn’t make enough plays and, despite popular opinion, it had nothing to do with their effort.
A team that isn’t trying doesn’t end up with 27 hits and 24 blocked shots by night’s end.
A team that isn’t confident ends up looking like the Canadiens did for 57 minutes of this 3-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. At least offensively.
They had a push with their goaltender pulled and an extra attacker on the ice over the last three minutes, but they weren’t threatening whatsoever before that — except for the goal Christian Dvorak scored to get them within one of the Penguins with 14:28 remaining.
Defensively, the Canadiens were significantly better than they were in Washington on Thursday, when they lost 6-3 to the Capitals after a sloppy third period that left head coach Martin St. Louis repeating over and over that they threw up on themselves.
Goaltender Samuel Montembeault kept it together, rebounding well from an awful performance that saw him give up five goals on 10 shots in an 8-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken to start the week.
His performance and the defensive execution were positives the Canadiens could take from this game against the Penguins. These were things they could build on.
But we’re not sure how the Canadiens can quickly reconstruct their swagger after such an offensively impotent performance against the only other team in the league that’s ritually hemorrhaged scoring chances and goals at the same rate they have since the start of the season. It’s practically non-existent right now, and it’s not as if the defensive performance and goaltending from this game will bring it back to life.
Those elements didn’t exactly provide some sort of moral victory, either. Especially for a team that lost its third game in a row and its seventh in its last nine played.
“It’s tough to hold your head high after games like this, especially in the kind of stretch that we’ve been on,” Canadiens forward Kirby Dach told reporters at PPG Paints Arena afterwards. “It’s frustrating, but hopefully if we keep doing the right things day-in and day-out, making sure we’re getting all the details right, stuff will start to go our way.”
It must be impossible for him and the other Canadiens to feel like anything will definitely go their way after a good effort doesn’t get rewarded in any way.
And it’s hard to stay on task when nothing goes your way.
Lane Hutson’s shot going off the post and in — instead of off of it and out — to tie the game late on Saturday would’ve helped. A bounce at one point or another earlier in the game would’ve been more than welcome.
But the Canadiens didn’t get one, and they certainly didn’t do what it takes to create one.
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Dach talked about getting more pucks to the net and crashing in for rebounds as a strategy that at least began to take shape in the third period. Hence Dvorak’s goal.
If that’s a stepping stone, great.
But the Canadiens could barely get pucks into the offensive zone, they couldn’t maintain any type of sustained pressure once they did and, without the help of the overly generous Penguins of 2024-25, they completely failed to make goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic’s night challenging.
Perhaps the disconnect started with line combinations that moved Josh Anderson up with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield and Joel Armia down with Jake Evans and Brendan Gallagher.
But it continued even after tweaks were made for the third period, with nearly everyone choking their sticks (never mind squeezing them).
Newhook said after, “You’re not going to flip it in one game,” and he was talking about the Canadiens doing some things well but failing to find their most complete selves despite being desperate to do exactly that.
That desperation level isn’t about to drop after yet another loss, but it’s hard to imagine their confidence is about to suddenly skyrocket.
It gets stripped away piece by piece and can typically only be rebuilt the same way.
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St. Louis said he liked that the Canadiens didn’t try to cheat their way back into the game after giving up two goals to Sidney Crosby, but he’ll have to be concerned about them cheating their way back towards some offensive cohesion against the Calgary Flames on Tuesday.
He wasn’t the only one who liked what they did defensively. Montembeault, Savard, Dach and Newhook all talked about it being foundational to them returning to the win column more regularly.
But that will be beyond challenging to maintain if the offensive cohesion remains as elusive and the confidence as fragile.
It’s a tough spot to be in. As is where they are in the standings after 12 games played—at 4-7-1, just one point up on the last-place San Jose Sharks as of this writing.
