MONTREAL — Kirby Dach earned this one.
Sure, it was a goal in garbage time, scored 1:23 after Nick Suzuki drove a spike through the Utah Mammoth’s casket and made it 5-2 Montreal Canadiens in the 58th minute of play.
But Dach deserved this one. He deserved it for stripping Olli Maata of the puck and steaming his way through the 140 feet to Karel Vejmelka’s net before finishing a beautiful move. He deserved it for the same dogged effort he put in through his 17 shifts before that. And he definitely deserved it for the way he played 10 of his 11 games prior to this one against Utah — with attention to detail, with full effort, and with a mindset that is helping him finally fulfill the promise he held as a former third-overall draft pick.
“I’m not really focused on end results or goals or anything like that,” said Dach after scoring his fourth goal in the last three games and helping the Canadiens to their 10th win of the season.
“I’m just focused on my daily process of what I need to do just mentally and physically to be ready to play the game,” Dach added, displaying the maturity you’d expect him to possess at 24, with 280 games of experience under his belt, and with all the painful lessons banked after debuting six years ago with the Chicago Blackhawks.
In some ways, his development mirrors that of the Canadiens.
They came into last season expecting results and ignoring the process, flashing their immaturity through the first 15 games to crater their way to the NHL’s basement, where they found themselves locked in a three-way tie for last place in the NHL with San Jose and Anaheim. Dach, coming off ACL and MCL reconstruction in his right knee, focused on scoring goals and racking up points to re-establish himself in the Canadiens’ pecking order, but ended up knocking himself down several pegs.
After 15 games, the Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., native had just one goal and four assists, but he had fully earned his minus-14 rating by neglecting the process.
But Dach now has five goals, seven points, and a plus-2 rating for a Canadiens team that’s tied for first in the NHL with New Jersey. He’s played 12 games, they’ve played 15, and everything looks markedly different for all of them for a reason.
“As young as we are, we’re still all maturing on and off the ice and away from the rink, and you just learn what you need to do better as a pro each and every year, and I think that kind of shows in the way we’ve kind of started the year,” Dach said. “I think every guy kind of looked themselves in the mirror after the playoff run last year and understood that, for where we want to go, we need to come to camp ready and have a good start.”
Standards were set, and they were to be met.
Dach knew his needed to be set much higher following his second ACL surgery.
At the opening of training camp, he detailed to us what he put himself through to raise the bar over the summer. And he reached for that bar through each of the first five games of this season.
Then Dach missed three games with a lower-body injury before playing a bad one in his home province against the Edmonton Oilers.
To see him immediately respond to that game with a strong one in Vancouver was evidence of his maturity. Playing better and better with each game that followed provided more evidence.
The Canadiens had to prove themselves, too, after playing their worst game of the season Tuesday. They lost it to the Philadelphia Flyers in a shootout and responded to it with a strong defensive effort in a 4-3 overtime loss to the New Jersey Devils Thursday.
For a fifth time this season, they surrendered a third-period lead in that game.
But the Canadiens played differently with the lead against the Devils. They were stifling, responsible, practically infallible, and then ultimately unlucky when Mike Matheson was hobbled by a shot to turn a New Jersey six-on-five advantage into a six-on-four advantage.
Up 3-2 against Utah after Samuel Montembeault made 15 saves to thwart the Mammoth in the second period Saturday, the Canadiens built on that third period in New Jersey with one coach Martin St. Louis referred to as their best third period of the season.
They took the lead Alex Newhook gave them in the second and built on it, with Cole Caufield’s insurance marker in the 54th minute of play the product of some dominant play.
Suzuki got out his hammer, and then Dach borrowed it to drive one more spike through the coffin.
But that was a just reward.
“I was really happy he scored at the end,” said St. Louis. “He’s another guy who I feel like is really trying to play with the right intentions, in terms of on the other side of the puck, and he’s getting rewarded. It’s so nice when a player’s really bought in, and working at it, and asking questions, and looking at video, and his actions are actually matching what he’s saying when he’s talking… His habits are matching what he says that he wants. It’s rare (those habits) don’t get rewarded, especially with the tools that he has. The game almost becomes a little bit easier. Not that it’s easy, but easier in the sense that you’re always in the right spots, and when you do that, you’re going to touch the puck more. You’re not just working hard, you’re not just sweating, you’re actually playing with a lot of purpose on the ice. And that’s what he’s doing. And you want those players to get rewarded.”
Dach hasn’t been perfect. Nor have the Canadiens.
But both he and the team are getting what they’ve earned so far this season.
5:30