MONTREAL — This 4-3 overtime loss for the Montreal Canadiens was the result of a series of bad decisions, and the last one will haunt the player who needed a win most.
Goaltender Jakub Dobes came into the game at 1-2-1, down on his luck and with his confidence spiralling. The opportunity to change that was right in his hands before he fumbled it away with a penalty in overtime.
To see Dobes drop it as he did was to know this might get worse for him before it gets better. Just 20 seconds after the struggling goaltender needlessly interfered with Collin Graf, Macklin Celebrini wired home the overtime winner with his second goal of Tuesday's game.
We don’t know what Dobes was trying to do in that instant, because he wasn’t available to explain it after the game. But we know that, like with everything else he does, he was trying his hardest — the quality that endeared him most to his teammates through his extremely successful rookie season, but also the quality that is plaguing him most right now.
It started off with a great win in Toronto, in which Dobes made the difference.
But then he allowed six goals in a loss to Pittsburgh. Then five goals in a loss to Carolina. And after being iced out for three straight games thanks to great performances by Jacob Fowler, it was another five goals in a loss to the Washington Capitals to set him back further.
Up 3-1 in the third period, Tuesday’s game looked like it was going to be a step forward for Dobes.
But the Canadiens lost their balance in front of him before he slipped up near the end.
“When you’re up two in the third, (with) the way you’re playing, this game should be over,” said coach Martin St. Louis. “I think we need to understand the score of the game, and what we need at that time, and what we don’t need. It’s very simple.”
The Canadiens simply didn’t need a hope play from Lane Hutson in the offensive zone when he was one of the last two players back and didn’t have proper cover in the event of a turnover. They simply didn’t need Arber Xhekaj dropping his gloves and swinging at Michael Kesselring for a penalty just four minutes after Keifer Sherwood took advantage of that Hutson turnover to set Michael Misa up with his first goal of the season. And they simply didn’t need Dobes to set a pick on Graf while they were in control of the puck in their own zone and set to make a line change.
But no one needed that less than Dobes, who had stopped Ivar Stenberg from all alone in front of him on the shot that came just seconds before Celebrini’s laser to the top of his net ended the game.
Was he distracted?
“It’s definitely a lot of the outside noise that he might be dealing with,” said Cole Caufield, who knows it’s only going to get louder around Dobes.
It was at full volume before Tuesday’s game, when fans vocalized their displeasure on social media with him getting the start over Fowler, who had helped the Canadiens beat the Buffalo Sabres 4-3 on Saturday.
But Dobes had fans chanting his name after making several great saves in the first period and one spectacular one on Graf after Caufield made it 3-1 in the second period.
He came up with calm, routine saves (like the one he made without allowing a rebound on Celebrini on the first shift of the third period), and he came up with timely ones (like the one he made on a Will Smith half-breakaway right after Misa got the Sharks within a goal).
But getting in the way of Graf in overtime was just another example of Dobes getting in his own way, of aggressively pursuing the win instead of letting it just come to him.
It’s a balancing act you wouldn’t expect a 25-year-old with just 83 games of NHL experience to have mastered just yet.
St. Louis, who played over 1,200 NHL games, knows.
The coach gave Dobes a chance to recalibrate Tuesday, and now he’ll have to give Dobes something else.
“If you feel your player is just constantly overworking and not being efficient on the ice, I think that can spiral longer, so as a coach you really have to help a player out when you feel he’s controlling everything he can,” St. Louis said earlier on Tuesday. “You really just have to calm the mind down a little bit and reassure him that things are going to be OK and try to steer him in the right direction… Sometimes you want it so bad that you work yourself out of what you think you should be doing, what you would normally do when you’re a confident player. So, it’s a balance…”
Dobes is fighting to find it. Almost too hard.
That penalty he took before Celebrini ended the game was a perfect example of it.
