MONTREAL — This was a bad game from start to finish for the Montreal Canadiens, but to suggest it ended the way it should’ve — with the Winnipeg Jets making NHL history to avoid a 10th straight loss — would be bending the truth.
For the Canadiens had a 4-0 lead with 2:40 to play, and when Cole Caufield, who scored two of their goals, said it should’ve ended well before they lost in overtime, he was right.
No matter how poorly his team played, it was in the best position it could possibly be in with the clock ticking down, and then it inexcusably crumbled.
Four Jets goals in 2:39, and one more from Dylan Samberg with 1:30 to go in overtime, sealed the Canadiens’ fate.
Afterwards, Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said, “We got smacked in the teeth and maybe that’s what we needed as a team,” and he was also probably right.
If you look at all five games the Canadiens won in succession without Nick Suzuki before this one, a couple of them — including the one at the Heritage Classic in Winnipeg — were hand-delivered by Jacob Fowler.
Having one more gifted to them by the rookie goaltender, who stopped the first 36 Jets shots he faced Tuesday, might’ve only reinforced some bad habits that had slowly crept into their play.
“We definitely felt like there were certain games where we could be playing better,” said Kaiden Guhle. “We were finding ways to win, and just tonight it bit us and it caught up to us.”
If it brings the Canadiens back down to earth a bit and gets them to reinvest in the good habits that had been so prevalent through the nine games before Suzuki went down, it’ll serve its purpose.
It definitely brought the Jets out of the hell they were experiencing.
Vibes around them were as heavy as it gets post-morning skate. And when we bumped into general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff right after being in their room, he jokingly responded to our rhetorical, "How’s it going?" with the adage: "It’s a great day to be in the National Hockey League."
Cheveldayoff couldn’t help but grin when repeating those words to us post-game, knowing they felt very different leaving his lips than they did 10 hours earlier.
We’re not sure how Caufield and Guhle would’ve felt had the Canadiens found a way to pull this one out, but they appeared to be feeling anything but great when we entered their dressing room.
“Just thought the game was over,” the former said before the latter added, “It was just not good enough from us from the get-go.”
First-period goals from Owen Beck and Josh Anderson didn’t mask that reality.
Caufield scored on a second-period, five-on-three power play, and then he scored another power-play marker 46 seconds into the third.
But those were just about the only things the Canadiens did well in either period.
“If you look at the game, we were winning, but we weren’t beating them,” said St. Louis. “And we’ve been on the other side of that. If you look at the game as a whole and disregard the score, they were the better team tonight, Winnipeg was. But it was 4-0 and there was 2:40 left, so how do you lose it anyway? It sucks, but I think Winnipeg was the better team. How it happened is hard to explain, because I’ve never been a part of something like that.”
It wasn’t the type of history he and the Canadiens were hoping to make in their new NHL Hometown Remix uniform debut.
Before they gave up four goals in rapid succession, they allowed the Jets to notch 80 shot attempts, which was entirely indicative of how they played the game.
It was out of character, and the Canadiens will have to prove that as early as Thursday, when they return to action against the Utah Mammoth.
St. Louis expects they’ll respond accordingly.
“The game’s been good to us,” he said. “We’ve had a really good process; we’ve had a really good start of the season. If you let this setback dictate what happens next, I mean, you gotta be stronger mentally than that. You’ve gotta be honest, you’ve gotta self-assess, and there’s gotta be some self-correction, but you can’t let one incident dictate what’s next for you in anything.”
What St. Louis meant, of course, is this catastrophic slip shouldn’t be the start of a slide.
And for as embarrassing as it was, he believes it should do some good for the Canadiens.
“I think it was one of our worst games five-on-five, and it’s a long season,” St. Louis said. “But you probably need some of those sometimes to just get back on track.”
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