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In Hainsight: The Canadiens Just Didn't Show up |
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Follow me @KarineHains for all updates about the Montreal Canadiens and women's hockey
After 10 short minutes of play Seattle was not only leading 2-0 but leading 14-1 in the shots department on pace for an 84-shot game. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Vince Dunn scored a third goal for the Kraken and the Canadiens were done, without having even started playing. After a promising effort in their last two games, the Habs just didn’t turn up and that’s not even a figure of speech. The only category in which they dominated in the first frame was the turnovers, they’d committed 11 to the Kraken’s one and that’s not a stat where you want to get the highest number.
After the game, Martin St-Louis was visibly fuming. He didn’t pull a Tortorella and take it out on the media but for the first time this season, he didn’t try and put the focus on what went right in that game. He said that his team was not ready to play in the first period and he didn’t know why, but he added that it wasn’t a coincidence that Montreal gives up the first goal so often. He wouldn’t tell the journalist what he told his players, but he said that they knew he wasn’t happy.
When asked if he thought that perhaps the team lacked leadership, he replied that he wasn’t a fly on the wall and that he didn’t know what was said at all times in the room when the coaching staff wasn’t there so that he didn’t know if anyone stepped up to say that the first period showing was inacceptable. For him, the players should have felt embarrassed about that dreadful performance. Even though Montreal was able to stop the bleeding in a sense after the first, the coach made it clear that there was no point at that stage: “After that kind of first, the 2nd and the 3rd mean nothing, it’s a shame”.
It's understandable that St-Louis felt that way, after all, his team had showed that they could do what was asked of them in the last two games, but yesterday, they just flat out didn’t do it. Make no mistake, last night’s debacle wasn’t because the Canadiens wore the supposedly cursed retro reverse jersey and it wasn’t because the team is young either. They could have worn anything, and the result would have been the same considering they just didn’t show up. As for putting it on the fact that the team is young, that doesn’t fly either, Joel Edmundson and David Savard were on the ice for half of the first period yesterday and they couldn’t get their defensive coverage right or manage to exit their own zone properly.
It's hard to find positives to talk about after that kind of showing, but I guess one could say that the line formed by Dadonov, Evans and Armia did put in the effort. In a game where no one seemed to care much, Evans dropped the gloves late in the third, clearly frustrated. It’s good that he cares, but with the number of concussions he’s suffered, he really shouldn’t be the one fighting. As for Juraj Slafkovsky, he did get a good scoring chance by slicing through the Kraken’s defense and finding himself in all alone on Jones, but he just couldn’t convert. Even though the points aren’t there, the young Slovak is maturing and starting to click more with his linemates.
As if things weren’t bad enough as they were, Cayden Primeau has been recalled on an emergency basis because Jake Allen is dealing with an upper-body injury. This doesn’t bode well for the Canadiens, although it does for those who advocate for a full-on tanking. The Habs have got a day off today, but we’ll see if St-Louis can whip them into shape tomorrow in time for the match-up with Nashville on Thursday.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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