The Montreal Canadiens had just snapped a seven-game losing streak last Tuesday when they beat the Florida Panthers 5-1 at the Bell Centre.
On all sides of the dressing room, reporters congregated around Alex Galchenyuk, Brendan Gallagher, Max Pacioretty and Shea Weber, who had scored Montreal’s goals for the night. Opposite Galchenyuk, Artturi Lehkonen and Charles Hudon sat quietly, systematically peeling off pad tape, stripping off their jerseys and equipment before preparing to leave the room, which is when this reporter sauntered over and teasingly asked, “When are you guys going to get in on the act?”
Both players laughed and gave their variation of the same answer.
“It’s coming,” said Hudon. “I’m getting so many chances, I just have to bury one.”
He had generated a half breakaway against Florida and failed to convert or even draw a penalty on the play. It was one of a couple of great chances he had; one of many he had failed to capitalize on since the beginning of the season.
Lehkonen had outdone Hudon — in this one and nearly every one that came before it — en route to tallying the most scoring chances on the Canadiens according to the data collected on naturalstattrick.com.
“You should see how much time we’re spending in practice on scoring,” Lehkonen said.
Bank planks had been set up in front of the nets for rebound drills, shooter tutors replaced goalies, and the Canadiens were getting back to the basics of scoring at their south shore practice facility in the lead up to last Tuesday’s game.
But both players skated scoreless through a 4-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday. They had combined for seven of Montreal’s 40 shots in the game and still had nothing to show for their efforts.
And after Saturday’s 5-4 win over the New York Rangers, in which Hudon and Lehkonen combined for five more shots, nothing had changed. So you can imagine their elation—and their relief—when both of them each scored two goals in Montreal’s 8-3 rout over the Ottawa Senators on Monday.
It was bound to happen for Lehkonen, who had tallied 18 goals in his rookie season last year before asserting himself in the team’s six-game playoff loss to the Rangers.
It needed to happen for Hudon, who appeared in just six games with the team prior to this season despite producing nearly a point per game in the AHL over three consecutive years.
He had timed his first NHL goal perfectly. The Canadiens had surrendered the first one just 21 seconds into the game, and it seemed fairly obvious things could get out of hand in short order if they had allowed the next one.
At the 4:27 mark of the first period, on the back half what was looking like a failed Montreal power play, Hudon corralled a stretch pass from Canadiens defenceman Jeff Petry and danced his way over the offensive blue line and straight through Sens defenceman Erik Karlsson before uncorking a low snap shot by goaltender Craig Anderson’s blocker.
Hudon jumped so hard into the glass in celebration he nearly knocked himself out. He got up, skated to centre ice, and made a sign of the cross before pointing to the sky. He was saluting his childhood friend Nicholas Antonelli, who had been killed by a drunk driver in 2011, when the two of them were just 17 years old.
It’s the way Hudon had celebrated all his goals since that day, and it was the way he celebrated after roofing a backhand at the 16:00 mark of the first period to give the Canadiens the crucial fourth goal that inevitably held up as Monday’s game winner.
Pacioretty stole a puck from Anderson and scored a shorthanded goal to give the Canadiens a 2-1 lead after 7:20 of play. Ottawa’s Ryan Dzingel answered 55 seconds later. Lehkonen scored his first to make it 3-2, Galchenyuk and Gallagher scored less than two minutes apart to make it 6-3 after Ottawa’s Chris DiDominico tallied, and Montreal’s Tomas Plekanec scored his first of the year before Lehkonen got his second.
It was looking like the story might revolve around Canadiens goaltender Al Montoya, who was surprisingly named the starter in favour of Carey Price. The team had jumped out to its worst start to a season in 76 years, at 2-7-1, before Price helped it earn a win over New York on Saturday. Even though he had struggled, it was generally presumed he’d take the net for a divisional game in enemy territory, with the Canadiens desperately in need to gather momentum and claw their way out of the NHL’s basement.
It was looking like Montoya would definitely be the story, when he allowed Ottawa’s first shot of the game to get by him.
But the night largely belonged to Hudon, and some of it went to Lehkonen. As a result, both of them can now finally laugh a bit about the chances they had missed in the lead up to this one.
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