After the Canadiens were embarrassed 8-2 by the Seattle Kraken Tuesday night at the Bell Centre, head coach Martin St. Louis said it was a hard game to evaluate and that he’d have to watch the video before pointing fingers.
Fans who paid hundreds of dollars for tickets, beer, hotdogs, parking, etc. didn’t have a hard time evaluating the Canadiens’ performance.
Some of the fans who stuck around until the bitter end booed the Canadiens as they left the ice. Worse than that, with four minutes left on the clock there were fans who started a mocking “Olé! Olé! Olé!” chant.
During his post-game news conference, I asked St. Louis if he had heard the “Olé! Olé! Olé!” and if he understood the fans’ frustration.
“Yeah, for sure, I do,” he said. “I get it. I’m disappointed like they are and I understand where they’re coming from.”
I then asked St. Louis what was his biggest disappointment.
The coach paused in silence for 13 seconds before finally saying: “I don’t know. I got to watch.”
There was plenty for Canadiens fans to be disappointed about and they probably don’t want to watch the video again.
The Kraken took a 1-0 lead on their first shot on goalie Samuel Montembeault only 25 seconds after the puck dropped. After the Kraken went up 3-0 at 7:27 of the first period on only their sixth shot, there were some mock cheers when Montembeault made a routine save. The game was basically over just after the midway point of the first period when the Kraken went up 4-0 on their eighth shot.
Cole Caufield got the Canadiens on the board with his ninth goal in 10 games, cutting the Kraken lead to 4-1 before the end of the first period. But the Kraken made it 5-1 at 1:32 of the second period and St. Louis pulled Montembeault, replacing him with Cayden Primeau. Montembeault allowed five goals on 10 shots as his record fell to 3-4-0 with a 3.67 goals-against average and an .891 save percentage. Primeau allowed three goals on 13 shots and now has a 1-1-1 record with a 4.02 GAA and a .871 save percentage.
It would be easy to point fingers at the goaltending, but defenceman Mike Matheson wouldn’t do that.
“We’ve got to be better for both of them,” Matheson said.
The Canadiens, who now have a 4-5-1 record, have allowed six goals or more in four of their 10 games. That’s not all on the goalies. The Canadiens are allowing an average of 32.5 shots per game, the fifth-most in the NHL.
To Montembeault’s credit, he was waiting in his locker-room stall to face the media after getting lit up on home ice for the second straight Tuesday. Last week, he allowed four goals on 10 shots before getting pulled in a 7-2 loss to the New York Rangers.
“I got to be better,” Montembeault said. “I think I need to be stronger mentally. If I have a bad start like this, I need to stay focused and make a save because the team needs it when we have a bad start like that.
“I need to be stronger mentally and stay focused all game long,” he added. “I think I was maybe too much in my head going back in the second (period) there. I need to do a better job of that.”
Heading into this season, Montembeault was considered a strong candidate to be one of the goalies for Team Canada at the 4 Nations faceoff tournament, slated for Feb. 12-20 in Montreal and Boston with the United States, Finland and Sweden the three other teams. The final rosters for the teams will be announced between Nov. 29 and Dec. 2.
When asked if the 4 Nations faceoff has been in the back of his mind, Montembeault said: “A little bit. But it’s still so far away. I don’t want to think about it too much. If I want to be there I’m going to have to have a better performance than what I’ve been doing in the last three games.”
With fans having a lot of hope coming into this season that the rebuilding Canadiens would at least be “in the mix” for a playoff spot — which was management’s mantra — their frustration is understandable. What made Tuesday’s loss even more frustrating is that it came after the Canadiens had won back-to-back games on the weekend against the St. Louis Blues and Philadelphia Flyers following the blowout loss to the Rangers.
Two steps forward, followed by another big step back.
Fans have been very patient during this rebuilding process, but it’s obvious that patience is starting to wear off.
Matheson understands the fans’ frustration.
“They pay a lot of money to come support us and watch us play,” he said. “They deserve a better effort than that. Right now we’re pretty pissed off. Tomorrow it will be about getting back to work and resetting and all that kind of stuff. But right now it’s just very frustrating.”
Those fans who were chanting “Olé! Olé! Olé!” would agree.