NEWARK, NJ.— On one sequence of Monday’s game, forward Artturi Lehkonen stole the puck for a shorthanded breakaway and missed his chance to bust out of a 24-game goal drought after he dumped a shot into Cory Schneider’s glove. On another, defenceman Jordie Benn rushed down the ice on a 2-on-1 and got caught between passing and shooting the puck and essentially shanked it into the corner of the rink— blowing a golden opportunity to score. And on one more, forward Jonathan Drouin had a puck drift into the full weight of his slap shot but he elected to fake it and ended up fanning on his pass.
Their Montreal Canadiens teammates weren’t much better through the first 40 minutes of the game, making Schneider—he of three NHL wins over the last 14 months—appear like an incarnation of Patrick Roy.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the rink, Shea Weber and Victor Mete lost two New Jersey Devils you’ve probably never heard of in coverage for goals against—and that was all she wrote.
The effort was passable, but it wasn’t great, and the Canadiens were out of sorts for the first half of their game in New Jersey. It cost them two valuable points in the standings. And a Paul Byron shorthanded goal was all they managed in the 2-1 loss.
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This was supposed to be a bounce-back for the Canadiens after allowing six unanswered goals in a 6-3 loss to the high-flying Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday. Instead, it was a massive letdown against a Devils team that bore no resemblance to the one that started this season. What it proved is that there are no easy games to play at this time of year.
“Every game’s going to be a playoff game for us from here on out,” said Canadiens forward Max Domi, who acknowledged that this one was a perfect example of there being no freebies in the final sprint towards the second season.
The Canadiens didn’t underestimate this Devils team missing its best player, Taylor Hall; this Devils team that traded one of its better ones in Marcus Johansson earlier on Monday; this Devils team that was playing without regulars Sami Vatanen, Will Butcher, Jesper Bratt and Pavel Zacha; this Devils team that lost forwards Miles Wood and John Quenneville to injury in the first 21 minutes of Monday’s game.
“There just wasn’t enough jam from us,” said Benn. “These games are huge for us, and there was just no jam for us in the first or second period.”
It showed when Weber let Nathan Bastian slip away in front of Carey Price and Bastian tipped in his first NHL goal 12:35 into the first period. And when Kurtis Gabriel, who played a total of 6:36, found the back of the net 3:06 into the second period after he overpowered Mete to get a rebound through.
And Montreal’s response? A few more harmless shots at Schneider and some untimely penalties for Domi, Joel Armia and Brendan Gallagher.
“As a whole, we weren’t skating as much as we probably should’ve, and that’s our strength as a team,” Domi said. “We’ve gotta find ways to be on the puck and in teams faces and just out-work them and do what we have to do to win hockey games. We came up short tonight.”
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More so on the power play than in any other department of the game—with the Canadiens going 0-for-4 to extend their stay as the 31st-ranked team in the NHL with the man-advantage.
When we asked Canadiens coach Claude Julien about his frustration level with his team’s power play, which has just one goal on its last 19 opportunities, he said “Next Question,” which was as revealing as any long-winded answer he could have conjured.
Julien was seeing red. He wasn’t the only one.
The team’s frustration, after suffering its fifth consecutive loss on the road, was just as apparent on the ice as it was off of it. Byron’s run at New Jersey’s Kyle Palmieri for an interference penalty while the Canadiens were skating 6-on-5 and trying to tie the game—and the scowl he wore on his face as the dressing room opened and he scurried by reporters to make his way to the trainers’ table for treatment—was a prime example of it.
They knew where this game slipped out of their grasp.
“You can’t win at this time of year if you’re not ready to play from the start,” said Julien.
And you can’t win them if your effort is anything less than impeccable and your execution is less than anything on point.
It doesn’t matter if you’re playing an elite team that has as much on the line as you do or a weaker team like the Devils, who fell out of playoff contention in early November.
New Jersey had a lineup full of young players eager to make an impression and cement a job for next season. They played loose—as a team with no pressure on it would.
The Canadiens didn’t handle that well, and they have no time to wallow in it. They must adjust, quickly, because on Tuesday, they’ll be in Detroit to take on a Red Wings team that poses the same type of challenge the Devils did. They had better be ready for it when the puck drops.
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