Canadiens’ poor execution, failure to correct bad habits lead to loss

It’s not as if the Montreal Canadiens lied to themselves about what happened Tuesday night at the Bell Centre. They were soundly outplayed in a win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, giving up 21 high-danger attempts while only generating four of their own, and they acknowledged they wouldn’t be as fortunate if they played the same way in their next game.

At least they knew.

Still, it should be mildly concerning to the Canadiens that they played the same way, spotted the Detroit Red Wings a 2-0 lead and a 17-4 shot advantage through the first period, and lost 4-2.

By the 24^th minute of play the Canadiens were down 3-0, and that’s not a position to be in against any team, let alone a desperate one like the Wings.

We don’t think there’s an excuse for that, and the Canadiens shouldn’t be looking for one. 

But we do think there’s a reason. 

Canadiens defenceman Mike Matheson, centre Kirby Dach and coach Martin St. Louis all referenced faulty execution when speaking with reporters at Little Caesars Arena afterwards, and we thought that might be something the Canadiens might suffer with after watching them work out on Wednesday.

It was their first practice in 10 days, and there wasn’t a whole lot they could get out of it with five of their regulars missing it for treatment.

“We tried to work on a couple things, but it’s hard,” said St. Louis. “We only had 14 skaters; it felt like a youth hockey practice.”

It kind of looked like one, too, making it far from ideal.

After slipping into some bad habits in a 7-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday and falling further into them in a 5-4 win over the New York Rangers Sunday, it was foreseeable they’d be adding to those habits in Tuesday’s game with the Lightning.

That’s what happened, and then you had a team full of players answering questions about winning with their B-game that night.

The Canadiens were a team that acknowledged that if not for goaltender Samuel Montembeault’s brilliant performance, they’d have lost convincingly to the Lightning. And then St. Louis rubber stamped that.

“You have to be honest with how you reflect on that game because if you think that the B-game’s worked one night and it’s going to keep working, you’re playing with fire,” he said. 

“For us, it’s just to be really honest about the way we’re assessing how we perform, and I think that’s how we’re able to find consistency and not just ride the wave cause we’re winning and everything’s good,” he added before concluding, “There’s things we need to do better.”

Those things don’t just get sorted out in the video room. They must be refined on the ice.

It’s what makes Saturday’s game against New Jersey a concern.

The Canadiens are traveling back from Detroit and are scheduled off Friday. 

Hey, the rest is obviously important, too. Especially with their post-Christmas schedule bouncing them through every time zone and forcing them to travel to play 11 of their last 13 games, which have been squeezed into the last 26 days.

That rest enabled the Canadiens to post an NHL-best 10-2-1 record over that time, so there’s no understating its value.

But when things look like they have over parts of the last four games — and most of the last two — practice becomes a lot more important than it was over the 10 previous games. 

It helps the power play quickly redeem its strength and enables the penalty kill to remain in sync after 0-for-3 and 2-for-4 performances, respectively, were a feature in Thursday’s loss. It also helps sharpen puck management under pressure, which was as dull as it gets against the Wings. 

Give the home team credit. 

St. Louis did.

“They had much more urgency, pace, energy and execution, so we spent way too much time in our zone,” he said. “Offensively, we were one and done in the first, which made it hard to grab momentum. First half of the game that lacked ingredients that make us successful…”

Even if the Canadiens started to incorporate some of those as the game went on, they missed a few too many to complete the comeback.

On the one hand, they were fortunate that teams they were chasing in the standings — the Columbus Blue Jackets and Ottawa Senators — also lost in regulation on Thursday. On the other, they allowed the Wings to gain ground, while the Boston Bruins and New York Rangers did the same and tightened a race that already featured next to zero separation.

The Canadiens will kick themselves over that. 

They’ll be honest with themselves about how it happened, and we’ll see how quickly they can correct it.

“We’ve grown and matured enough that we can turn the page on this,” said Dach, and we’d give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

After each game dating back to the beginning of December, the Canadiens have consistently hit the refresh button and responded well — and certainly better than they did Thursday after Tuesday’s performance. It’s why they’ve only lost consecutive games once since then. 

But it’s going to take more than just some candid self-reflection to get back to the level of play that carried them through the six weeks prior to this one.

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