MONTREAL— It’s late in the game when Zachary Bolduc has the shift that confirms that everything he’s been working on has come together.
His Montreal Canadiens are already leading the Columbus Blue Jackets 2-1 thanks to goals he set up and scored, and now he’s helping them keep this relentless opponent as far away from his own net as possible, with prescient reads and perfectly-timed hits guiding him all over the ice.
As Josh Anderson barrels in on the forecheck, Bolduc is in the exact right place to scoop up the puck as the second forechecker. He cycles it up high to the point and refills the lane down the boards, arriving right on time to pound Damon Severson into the glass and force the Blue Jackets defenceman to turn the puck over. The Canadiens retrieve it and dive down low as Bolduc comes back to high ice to cover his two linemates. Then the Blue Jackets finally put an end to the 75-second sequence by intercepting the puck and icing it.
It rubberstamped Bolduc’s best game of the season.
“It feels good,” the 23-year-old said after the Canadiens held on for the 2-1 win. “It’s been up and down through the year and now I feel very comfortable on the ice and in the system.”
He didn’t come here under ideal circumstances to immediately find his best self.
You think about every young player who arrived in Montreal through the first three years of the Canadiens’ rebuild, and they were extended the runway to make their mistakes and learn on the fly. But Bolduc came two months after the team was dispatched from its first playoff series, after expectations had already risen, after the days of development trumping results were authoritatively parked in the rearview mirror.
Add in the layers of him being Quebecois, of having scoring pedigree at every other level, of having early success as a rookie in St. Louis, and the pressure on him to immediately hit was considerable.
It only mounted when Bolduc scored in each of his first three games of the season, while he was still fumbling around in the dark for his bearings.
He didn’t exactly find them over his next 34 games — even if he scored seven more goals over that stretch — and the search only began to really bear fruit deep into his more recent 31-game slump without a goal.
But over the last few weeks, Bolduc slowly started looking more and more like a player who was thinking much less about what he needed to do and just doing it, making a game like Thursday’s win inevitable for him.
He was in the right place at the right time to capitalize on Lane Hutson’s work by feeding defenceman Jayden Struble his first goal of the season to make it 1-0 Canadiens. And he made great reads at both ends of the ice before potting what proved to be the winner — his first goal since Dec. 23.
“I think when you play simple, you stop second-guessing yourself, which he’s been doing,” said Jake Evans, who fed Bolduc the pass for his goal.
“He’s just making the right plays,” Evans added.
It’s been a slow burn to this point, which was understandable for a player who arrived under the white-hot spotlight in Montreal with just 97 games of NHL experience.
Bolduc was labeled a core piece before he even played for the Canadiens, with memories of 50- and 55-goal seasons in Quebec City, for Patrick Roy’s Remparts, resonating.
“He didn’t score his whole life because he didn’t have great offensive reads,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis before offering a reminder of how much more goes into being successful at the NHL level.
“To create more instances, you’ve gotta understand the collective game defensively, whether it’s forecheck, tracking back, D-zone, whatever it is,” St. Louis continued. “I feel like as the year progressed, and I would say the last month, he’s really put it all together off the puck, I would say.”
It’s what has enabled Bolduc to keep his edge in the internal competition, which was bolstered by healthy post-Olympic returns for Alex Texier and Alex Newhook.
Playing with Evans helped.
“I just tell him to play straightforward hockey and direct,” Evans said. “Once we do that, we start to understand where each other are going and get pucks back, and then you gain a little more confidence when you touch the puck more.”
You could really see it ramping up in the 5-2 win the Canadiens earned over the Carolina Hurricanes Tuesday, and it finally paid off in Thursday’s win over the Blue Jackets.
In between, Texier suffered a lower-body injury, leaving a hole for Josh Anderson to fill next to Bolduc and Evans.
But neither player was affected by the change.
Evans was himself, and Bolduc was the best version of himself.
“I wish he would get rewarded more often, but you can tell it’s coming,” said St. Louis. “And for me, that’s exciting.”
It’s important.
On a rare night on which the Canadiens’ top line missed the score sheet, unlikely sources of offence came through. Budding confidence for support players was bolstered at a time of the season it needed to be — with 11 games to go in a playoff chase bound to come down to the wire.
“I feel really good,” said Bolduc, though his performance had already confirmed that much.
It showed everything he’s been working on has come together, and not just on the scoring plays.
