MONTREAL — You know this loss stung the Montreal Canadiens a little more than any of the three that directly preceded it.
A Saturday night defeat at the hands of the Boston Bruins. Their longest-standing and most bitter rivals delivering a gut-punch—and a few crosschecks for good measure.
Ouch.
Nobody on the Montreal side felt it more than Jonathan Drouin. He had played one of his best games in the team’s uniform since being traded from the Tampa Bay Lightning in June of 2017 and it had come undone with a double-minor he took with 5:21 remaining.
The 23-year-old winger was electric, acting as the driving force in a third-period Canadiens comeback from down 2-0 — scoring a tantalizing goal on an end-to-end rush to get his team on the board 6:46 into the frame.
And then Drouin was apologetic, telling his teammates that John Moore’s game-winning goal was on him for crosschecking David Backes in the face and putting them down a man for what turned out to be two minutes and 24 seconds.
He did his best to even the score. With seconds left and the Canadiens skating at 6-on-5, he feathered a perfect pass across the offensive zone and through a Bruins defender’s legs that Max Domi hammered with all of his might.
But Boston’s Kevan Miller stepped in and blocked the shot and hope for the Canadiens to battle back again died with the puck getting flipped out to the neutral zone.
Drouin was downright furious after the game.
“Lot of emotions, lot of skating, lot of hitting,” he said of the contest before explaining his role in how it ended. “[Sean] Kuraly tried to put a knee on me and Backes comes with his stick high so [he] got what he deserves.”
Canadiens coach Claude Julien thought Drouin got what he deserved, too.
“Listen, a penalty at the time of the game isn’t a penalty you want to take,” he said. “If he said it was on him, he was right. In a game like this where we came back — to cancel that out you really have to be undisciplined.
“Even if [Backes] came after him, he gave him a crosscheck in the face. It’s a four-minute penalty and it’s something we can’t continue to do. If we want to win games, we need the best discipline from everyone.”
The Canadiens had it for most of a game that absolutely lived up to the rivalry we’ve known and loved since we were introduced to it in the mid-1980s. They were on the receiving end of some punishing hits and kept their emotions in check while refusing to back down.
Drouin was no exception to that up until his untimely penalty.
In the second period, he raced into the offensive zone, broke through one check and got absolutely pasted by Miller behind the net. He bounced right back up to his skates and carried on without retaliating.
“The hit behind the net was fine,” Drouin said. “It was maybe a little bit late but he didn’t try to get my head or anything. It’s part of the game, part of that rivalry, and it got me going after. So thanks [to] him.”
There Drouin was, smoking Brad Marchand with a clean hit along the boards just two minutes and change before charging in on the rush that gave Montreal life.
He was buzzing from the start, but he was particularly dangerous over the final two periods.
Drouin pulled off a circus move to avoid Kuraly’s knee. In the end, he was just trying to defend himself when Backes came at him. The result was unfortunate.
[snippet id=4269767]
The result was even more unfortunate for the Canadiens, who started the week with an overtime loss to the Washington Capitals and ended it with losses to the New Jersey Devils, Buffalo Sabres (in overtime) and Bruins.
The Canadiens didn’t wilt in this one. Not even when Artturi Lehkonen had a goal called back in the third period.
But they ultimately fell to 11-8-5 on their season.
“With the standings so tight, we needed to find two points tonight,” said Montreal’s Andrew Shaw, who set up Tomas Tatar for the 2-2 goal at 10:09 of the third period. “If we played a full 60, guaranteed we would have won that game. Saturday night at home against the Bruins. It would have been nice to come out on top.”
A couple of bad mistakes from Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Brett Kulak cost the Canadiens goals against in the first period—and they had nothing to do with the fact that Montreal’s was playing its 11th game in 21 days and it’s second in 24 hours.
The Bruins had beaten the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday and were playing without some of their best players in Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara, Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo.
They threw 35 shots at Canadiens goaltender Carey Price and allowed 33 to get their goaltender, Tuukka Rask. They recorded 27 hits and absorbed 51 of them. And they capitalized on their best opportunity with Drouin looking on from the penalty box.
“Good, old fashioned Bruins-Habs hockey,” said Boston coach Bruce Cassidy. “Hockey Night in Canada, Saturday night. I think the temperature level went up. We rose to it, so did they. It looked like a rivalry out there tonight. Could’ve gone either way. It’s physical, guys are bleeding, guys are chirping each other, great saves at each end, some nice goals; so I thought it was a typical Habs-Bruins [game like] games I grew up watching and hopefully everyone got entertained. You always want to come out on the right side of it [and] we did.”
[relatedlinks]