CHICAGO — It was on Friday afternoon that Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said something specific to Oliver Kapanen that applied to all four of the centres he’d later depend on in a 4-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center.
“I think Oliver understands that hockey is not a one-on-one game,” St. Louis said. “It’s a team game; it’s a collective game with one-on-one moments. I don’t think Kappy’s a guy who’s searching for these one-on-one moments. I think he respects the rules of the game, the collective game on both sides of the puck, and I think that allows him to help the team on both sides and continue the actions, continue the offensive plays. He’s very predictable for his teammates… Wherever Kappy’s on the ice, and whether he’s going to touch it or whether he’s going to come back towards our zone, I know exactly what he’s going to do because he understands the rules.”
So does Phillip Danault, who’s so far centred a line that, coming into Friday’s game, was tops in the NHL in expected-goals percentage among lines to have played at least 65 minutes together.
Alex Newhook also understands the rules of the collective game and constantly plays by them, centring what’s become another strong line with Josh Anderson and Chris Kreider. And Jake Evans, who scored two goals and added an assist in the win over the Blackhawks, rarely, if ever, breaks those rules.
None of them — not Evans, Newhook, Danault nor Kapanen — are nearly as dynamic as Nick Suzuki (a 100-point centre whose Selke Trophy win last season validated his status as one of the top defensive forwards in hockey), but all of them are as predictable as he is by the definition St. Louis provided. So, with the onus on all of them to step up in Suzuki’s two-to-four-week absence with an upper-body injury, all they have to do is be themselves to collectively replace Suzuki.
So far, so good. Even if it was against this lowly Blackhawks team, which fell to 3-7-0 Friday.
That shouldn’t diminish what the 5-3-2 Canadiens did in their first game without their captain, though, especially coming off a third game in the last week in which they blew a third-period, two-goal lead.
After spotting the Blackhawks a 1-0 lead on a broken play — Juraj Slafkovsky attempted dump-in bounced off the linesman’s skate and sent Connor Bedard in on an odd-man rush that he finished with his patented shot — Evans put himself in the spot Kirby Dach would expect him to be in to score the equalizer.
That was one of the first samples in this game of his predictability, which enabled the collective game St. Louis expects will carry the Canadiens through the adversity they’re facing without Suzuki.
“I always talk about balance on the ice, offensive balance,” he said. “You look at the first goal, that goal happens because of the balance that we have. It goes bang, bang, bang. The predictability of where guys are going to be — when the guy’s in space, he knows his first look, (and) that’s where it’s going to go. And if he doesn’t like it, he’s got other options. It helps you to continue. It doesn’t guarantee you’re going to get the looks, but you can continue to have that predictability.”
It ends there, too.
The Canadiens closed out this game by remaining in balance both with the puck and without it. Thanks to that balance, they notched 12 of their 41 five-on-five shot attempts on the night in the third period while limiting the Blackhawks to only eight of their 25. They made smart, effective, and predictable plays to buck their most troubling trend of late, and they did it all without their most reliable player.
“I can’t really remember one play in that third period that could’ve hurt us,” said Evans.
He accurately called the hooking penalty Juraj Slafkovsky took with just over six minutes remaining “a fringe call.” And thankfully for the Canadiens, it didn’t cost them, with Chicago’s Teuvo Teravainen wiping out his team’s power play just 18 seconds later.
Then Mike Matheson, in his return from a four-game absence with a lower-body injury, scored into an empty net to put a stamp on a complete team win.
Evans played excellently in it. He drove his line to a 7-2 advantage in shot attempts and scored at five-on-five. He also assisted on Kaiden Guhle’s first goal of the season after scoring one of his own shorthanded. And he played just under a minute less than Danault, who had an assist and finished plus-2 in 18:09 against the team that took him in the first round of the 2011 NHL Draft.
Newhook didn’t hit the scoresheet, but he drove his line to an 8-5 shot-attempt advantage. And while Kapanen finished minus-1 because of that unlucky bounce off the linesman, he played as expected in Suzuki’s spot next to Slafkovsky and Cole Caufield.
He played like his predictable self.
“I think when you’re playing with top guys, you can sometimes try and change your game to find them in spots, and I think he just played his game and helped them out,” said Evans. “Hopefully Nick’s not out too long, but if Kappy’s there playing with them I think he’s just going to get better and better.”
As a player who put up 22 goals and 37 points as a rookie, a player who missed the first 18 days of the season with a knee injury, you can expect Kapanen’s offence to pick up.
His all-around game is in a good place. Same goes for Danault, Newhook and Evans.
All four of them are predictable and reliable, giving St. Louis the ability to deploy them against any player at either end of the ice in any situation.
It’s exactly what he needs in Suzuki’s absence.
