MONTREAL — It was another Martin St. Louis press conference filled with comments about full-team implication, actions that don’t help the opposition, the league not caring about the circumstances under which the Canadiens enter a game and, oh, that mantra of his about doing the things that don’t guarantee wins but increase the odds of winning.
It’s getting repetitive, isn’t it?
But that’s the point.
Over his first two-and-a-half years as a coach who knew his team was destined to lose much more than it won, St. Louis read us a chapter and verse of the philosophy he developed over decades of breathing, sleeping, eating, drinking and, of course, playing hockey. The Hall of Famer cracked the window wide open and invited us into his world of unique thoughts on the game, which varied with every turn in the journey his young, rebuilding team was navigating.
But if the content feels a little stale of late, it’s due to the Canadiens finding the straightaway and hitting cruise control. St. Louis doesn’t have to come up with anything new to explain what’s happening — even after losses, like the one his team suffered to the Dallas Stars at the Bell Centre Saturday.
This was a game that could’ve looked different than the last 12. It appeared it was going to look different when the Stars shot out to a 17-7 shot advantage in the first period.
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But the only thing different about it for the Canadiens was that they ended up on the other side of a 2-1 scoreline.
Consider what it says about them that they finished the game with 67 shot attempts to Dallas’s 63 and 30 hits to Dallas’s eight — especially with the Stars resting and relaxing in Montreal while the Canadiens were dominating the Capitals in Washington on Friday night. They should’ve been exhausted after arriving home in the early hours of Saturday morning, they should’ve been in trouble against a rested Stars team that had won its last six games, but they looked the same as they had over the last six weeks of successful hockey and had just as much claim to the result as the Stars did.
Talk about growth…
“We’re older,” St. Louis said before the back-to-backs against Washington and Dallas. “I don’t know exactly how old we are, but we’re older.”
With age comes wisdom and maturity.
Those things are also coaxed out by good teachers, and the Canadiens have one in St. Louis.
“I think he’s got a vision of what he wants the team to look like,” said David Savard prior to returning from a four-game absence with an upper-body injury to play 15 shifts against the Stars.
“It’s finally clicking,” he concluded.
So, what is St. Louis doing now that it is clicking? He’s just basically keeping his hands on the wheel.
He was gripping it tight at the beginning of the season, with the Canadiens ritually clawing at it and veering the car towards ditches and roadblocks.
But St. Louis wrestled back full control at the end of October, after the last time the Canadiens were in Washington.
They went to the third period tied 3-3 with the Capitals on Halloween, and then they completely came undone to lose 6-3.
That game left St. Louis saying the Canadiens puked all over themselves.
That was something he hadn’t said after any other loss — and there had been plenty of ugly ones at the start of the season — and it’s something he hasn’t had to say since.
“I think from that point on we took a group decision,” St. Louis said after Saturday’s markedly different loss in the shootout to the Stars. “We didn’t quite get the success right away, but you could tell it was turning a little.”
It’s turned completely, though, over the last six weeks, with the Canadiens winning 12 of their last 18 games to somehow put themselves in the playoff conversation.
All throughout the run — over which the Canadiens have the fifth-best points percentage in the NHL — the recipe has been the same. They haven’t deviated from it at all, even when it would be understandable if they did — like late in the second half of a back-to-back against a red-hot and rested opponent like the Stars.
The Canadiens outshot them 11-8 in the third period Saturday, and they did it by playing their brand of smart, simple, deep hockey that kept the play much further away from goaltender Samuel Montembeault than it was in the first period (when their legs were wobbly and he had to prop them up), and there was nothing surprising about it.
“I think, right now, if you don’t have these kind of actions in the third period, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb with this group because the players are playing for what’s best for the team, not what’s best for themselves,” St. Louis said. “I think when you have that buy in, if you’re not bought in you stick out like a sore thumb.”
The Canadiens have followed his lead and taken up his language.
Speaking to Patrik Laine — who scored the opening goal in his return from a four-game absence with flu-like symptoms — sounded the same as speaking to Kaiden Guhle. Both were talking about the template St. Louis has helped them establish, and both were using some of the same words he keeps repeating in his press conferences.
You can imagine how enjoyable it is for the coach to hear. He wrote the song, and now he’s just listening to his players sing it in harmony.
“I think I’ve steered them in that direction,” St. Louis said. “I think our job as a staff is to make sure we’re all on the same page on the ice. In different parts of the game, we’ve got to be on the same page. That’s our job. And after that, I feel everybody’s on the same page, and they coach themselves coming off the ice, and when you have that it’s because I think you’re clear…
“It’s really nice to be part of this right now, and we’re going to try to keep growing it.”
That process won’t require planting new seeds.
The ones St. Louis has sewn are yielding what the Canadiens have been after since he first started in his position.
He’s had a lot of new and interesting things to say since then, but lately he’s just been repeating himself because they’ve found the consistency they’ve been yearning for.
That’s a big win for the Canadiens.
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