MONTREAL — Ben Chiarot certainly didn’t intend to do it, but when he was asked on Wednesday if he and the five other defencemen need to get more involved in the offence — they’ve combined for zero points so far through four games of this series with the Toronto Maple Leafs — he got to the root of the biggest problem his Montreal Canadiens have.
"Toronto’s a great offensive team," Chiarot said. "I would say that the D joining offensively becomes secondary — especially when you have dangerous players on the ice. On all four lines they have (guys who) can strike pretty quickly offensively. I don’t think our priority as defencemen right now is jumping up and joining the rush and taking those chances right now. That would be the biggest thing. That comes secondary right now. Right now our priority is defending."
Chiarot’s priority in this answer was defending his unproductive fellow blue-liners by outlining an undeniable reality.
The Leafs are talented, their depth of talent is what made them the North Division’s best team this season, and it’s a defenceman’s job to think about how to defend them above all else. He’s absolutely right about that.
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But coach Dominique Ducharme’s system is predicated on close support, on the players providing options for each other in all three zones — on defence and on offence — and Chiarot’s comment provides the biggest insight into why the Canadiens haven’t executed it consistently since Ducharme took over from Claude Julien on Feb. 24.
He should have acknowledged that he, Shea Weber, Jeff Petry, Joel Edmundson, Brett Kulak and Jon Merrill need to at least get more involved than they have been in the 60-foot area between the offensive blue line and Toronto goaltender Jack Campbell’s net. That they need to start the rush more efficiently and support it coming through the neutral zone to push the Maple Leafs back and not enable them to stand up as easily at their own line, because that would give the Canadiens a chance to successfully enter the zone more often in possession of the puck.
Doing that leads to more offence, and the Canadiens have no chance of pushing this series another game — let alone winning it in seven — if they don’t start producing more offence.
Even Chiarot knows that.
When he was asked what the Canadiens need to do to extend this series, he answered, "Put the puck in the net."
The onus is on winger Tyler Toffoli, who scored 28 goals this season but has zero in these playoffs. Forward Brendan Gallagher, a consistent scorer since he first stepped into the NHL in 2013, said, after once again failing to score in Game 3, that he knew he was going to have to eventually come through with a big goal for the Canadiens to have success. And this team can’t do it without Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Tomas Tatar, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Josh Anderson, Corey Perry and Paul Byron coming up with more than the four goals they have between them so far.
But those guys won’t be able to help much if they’re consistently outnumbered in the offensive zone, and if they’re the only threats the Maple Leafs have to think about.
The Canadiens haven’t just had to defend Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Alex Galchenyuk, Alex Kerfoot and Jason Spezza. Six of the seven defencemen the Maple Leafs have used have scored at least a point in this series, and it’s because all of them are implicated in Toronto’s attack.
Meanwhile, if the Canadiens have held Toronto’s most lethal weapons — Matthews and Marner — to just three points each through four games, it’s not solely because Chiarot, Weber and the big, physical Montreal defence has taken care of its top priority. You don’t stop players of that quality with just two players at a time; you need all five of your guys working in unison, and a goaltender like Carey Price bailing them out when the breakdowns occur.
That recipe has worked well for the Canadiens in this series, and it should remain a priority.
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But seeing the activation of their defence in the offence as a risk instead of as a conduit to better executing their system, is the type of framework that needs to be deconstructed and reimagined before they attempt to keep their season alive in Toronto on Thursday. If the majority of your game plan is focused on shutting down the Maple Leafs, who have been without captain John Tavares for 11 of 12 periods and without Nick Foligno for the last two games of the series, not enough emphasis is being placed on forcing them to defend.
In Toffoli’s estimation, there are a lot of things the Canadiens do in that regard — outside of the clichés of "getting to the net," and "creating more traffic, crashing the crease and making life more difficult on their goaltender." The most important things he said was, "don’t give them too much respect," and "be confident in our own abilities and go from there."
Toffoli is a two-time Stanley Cup winner who was part of a Los Angeles Kings team that overcame a 3-0 series deficit against the San Jose Sharks in 2014. He said the key to that improbable win was "coming together as a team."
When he was asked how the Canadiens can win Game 5 and give themselves a chance to tie the series and then perhaps even win it, he doubled down on that thought.
"We just have to come out and we have to play hard and just play as a group," Toffoli said. "No individuals … none of that. So, we have to play as a group, play the way that we’re set out and the way that we talk. I think if we do that and we play to our abilities, everybody has a good game, I think we have a good shot."
The Canadiens have none at all if they don’t all get on the same page. They need everyone working together — especially in creating offence, where they haven’t been able to be threatening, let alone effective.
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