MONTREAL — You isolate a game like this one.
When the NHL’s most successful team beats its least successful one by a score of 10-1 — like the Montreal Canadiens did to the Colorado Avalanche Saturday — you don’t read too far into it.
But if there’s one thing you can take away from this game, it’s that these two clubs are headed in completely different directions from each other.
Granted, nearly every team in the league suffers an embarrassing loss like this at least once during the 82-game season. The Canadiens took that bullet already, but their 10-0 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Nov. 4 was their first regulation-time loss of the season after collecting wins in nine of their first 10 games.
The Canadiens rattled off four wins in a row after that game and have since gone 10-5-2.
As for the Avalanche, Saturday night marked the seventh time this season they had surrendered five or more goals in a game. They were so bad in this one that five had gone in their net before the 8:42 mark of the first period, which was 21 seconds shy of an NHL record.
“I know it happened to them, too,” said Colorado’s Matt Duchene, who miraculously escaped Montreal’s wrath by finishing only minus-1 through 17:31. “But that’s seven (losses) in our last eight games.”
The Avalanche had pulled off a gritty 4-2 win over the Bruins in Boston on Thursday to halt a six-game losing streak. They had a spirited practice in Montreal Friday and got some rest ahead of a feature matchup with the Canadiens on Hockey Night in Canada.
When Nathan MacKinnon — who assisted on Colorado’s lone goal — was asked how his team could come up with an effort like this one after turning it around in Boston, he responded by saying, “You don’t ever expect this.”
Avalanche coach Jared Bednar was almost at a loss for words before offering up the following:
“I’m going to take the blame for that one because we weren’t prepared to start the game,” he said. “They’re the best team in the league, they have the best record at home, and we’re all the way down in the standings and we weren’t prepared to play.
“If you have one or two players who don’t show up, then that’s on them. But when you don’t have the whole team show up, then that’s on me.”
The Canadiens had something to do with it, too.
Only three skaters of the team on the winning side failed to hit the scoresheet. Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty led the way with the first four-goal game of his career and had an assist to boot. Teammate Brian Flynn scored his first two goals of the season, and Jeff Petry, Paul Byron, Alexander Radulov and Artturi Lehkonen added the others.
And in the absence of top centres Alex Galchenyuk and David Desharnais, Tomas Plekanec had four assists, while Torrey Mitchell and Phillip Danault each had one.
The 10-spot the Canadiens put up was the most they’ve achieved at the Bell Centre since the doors first opened there in 1996.
If that type of performance doesn’t inspire confidence for this group, nothing will. Pacioretty said he hoped it would but also offered a sober perspective on how to process this.
“We know what it’s like to be on the other end and we know that they didn’t play their best; we know that the bounces went against them; we know that when you’re down in that situation early, it’s really, really tough to grab the puck and have patience and make a play,” said Pacioretty. “I think we gotta forget about tonight.”
A good team would, and it’s hard to view the league-leading Canadiens as anything but that.
Good teams don’t crash and burn the way the 10-15-1 Avalanche have on too many occasions this season. They don’t get smoked 10-1 when trying to win a game for 39-year-old teammate Jarome Iginla, who became the 16th player in NHL history to appear in 1,500 games by participating in this one.
On the flip side of the coin, the Canadiens were up 9-1 after two periods and kept their foot on the pedal to finish up.
“I didn’t care if we scored one more goal, it was not important,” said Canadiens coach Michel Therrien. “I think the message was more we gotta make sure we play the right way; we gotta make sure that we don’t give shots and scoring chances because we have a teammate behind us (goaltender Carey Price) who’s been really good for us and we don’t want guys to take bad habits.”
The Canadiens ended up limiting Colorado to just four shots on net in the third period.
It was just one game, and you don’t read too deeply into it, but it only served to reinforce how much separation there is between these two teams.
