MONTREAL— The Montreal Canadiens missed the net 23 times. They whiffed on seven power plays. They failed to generate more than two shots and a single dangerous scoring chance on two five-on-threes. And after Saturday’s game slipped away at six-on-five, the opportunity to redeem some much-needed confidence evaporated with a fifth loss in six games.
This one against the Boston Bruins started with a bang.
Jayden Struble delivered it because he felt the team needed a lift, and because he felt he could provide it by giving up seven inches and 47 pounds in a fight against six-foot-seven, 255-pound Nikita Zadorov right off the opening faceoff.
Struble said he talked with Arber Xhekaj about it Friday afternoon and that the two of them concluded they needed to do something to return some of the swagger to a Canadiens team in desperate need of some.
In the end, Struble — and Xhekaj, who fought Tanner Jeannot — made a valiant effort that didn’t quite elevate the Canadiens to the place they wanted to get to in this game.
And so, they lost 3-2 and remained in search of what the Bruins currently have.
“I think the whole confidence right now is low, and it’s affecting the five-on-five and power play,” said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki. “When your touches aren’t confident, you’re not feeling like every play’s open to you.
“It’s tough sometimes. We’ve got a lot of talent in here. We’ve got to work through that.”
The Bruins did, and look at them now.
They followed three wins to start the season with seven regulation losses over their next eight games before everything unblocked in a 5-2 win over the New York Islanders on Oct. 28. And since the floodgates swung open, they’ve rolled over everything in their path.
If you want to know what swagger looks like, they showed it Saturday. Even without Charlie McAvoy, who missed the second half of the game after taking the full brunt of a Noah Dobson one-timer in the face.
It oozed out of co-leader David Pastrnak, who may have only recorded two assists but proved to be a threat on every single one of his 17 shifts.
Confidence was the Bruins never trailing. Confidence was them needing only one power play late in the second period—after giving the Canadiens three consecutive looks (including a five-on-three for 1:50)—to make the type of simple play the Canadiens came nowhere near executing for what proved to be the winning goal.
Pastrnak fed the puck down low to Pavel Zacha, who slipped it through his own legs to Viktor Arvidsson, who then roofed it on Samuel Montembeault.
The Canadiens couldn’t get enough shots by Jeremy Swayman, leaving them perplexed as to where all the good vibes had gone from a 9-3-0 start to the season.
“Confidence is the only way you stay in this league. You’ve got to have a little bit of swagger, and I think we’re lacking a bit of that,” said Cole Caufield. “It’s something you have to work on individually, and that’s something that you have to bring to the rink every day. We expected a lot more of ourselves and it wasn’t good enough tonight.”
Why?
“I don’t really know what it is,” said Struble. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.”
Who does when the reads are too frequently botched? When the passes go astray? When the good looks get spoiled by missed shots?
Confidence erodes a bit with every mistake and turns to dust with every mistake that gets compounded. It only slowly returns to solid form with enough good plays getting strung together.
If you only make some and lose, it leaves you hoping you’ve found something instead of knowing you have.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis talked about plays that inspired some hope after Saturday’s game. He didn’t mention Jake Evans’ shorthanded goal in the first period, but he had to have liked it.
St. Louis did reference the one Struble, Suzuki and Caufield connected on at four-on-four to get his team back to within one goal with 1:16 remaining in the second period.
“That’s execution when they’re broken, so that’s a good sign,” he said.
St. Louis added he saw some others through the third period, including at six-on-five, where some of Montreal’s most dangerous chances were generated but not capitalized on.
“I guess, in that sense, it’s encouraging,” St. Louis said. “We haven’t forgotten how to play, we haven’t forgotten how to execute, it’s just it’s a hard league sometimes. And it would be nice to play with swagger every night. Swagger will go up and down, but we’ve got to find a way to get it back up and you do that one play at a time.
“Did we make enough to give us a little something? We hope so.”
The coach and players won’t know for sure until the power play that produced seven goals on its first 13 chances with Ivan Demidov added to the top unit clicks again after missing on 17 straight chances over the last five games. They won’t know for sure until Suzuki’s line with Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky starts rolling the way it was rolling through the first 13 games instead of being shut down the way it has been in four of the last five games. They won’t know for sure until the defence looks much more like it did through the start and much less like it has over this past week. And they won’t know until at least one of the goaltenders plays like Swayman did for the Bruins on Saturday.
The next opportunity comes on Monday in Columbus. It was missed against Boston.
