Stuff got real in Washington Thursday.
It was a whole other Martin St. Louis who faced the media after the game, yet another embarrassing loss for the Canadiens, going down 6-3 to the Washington Capitals. Often enough, in his nearly three years coaching the Canadiens, St. Louis has been philosophical after tough losses, frequently seeing positives in even the darkest of games.
But Thursday he didn’t sugarcoat it, and with good reason. His team was terrible, again.
“We were in a good spot going into the third and you just throw up all over yourself,” he said, his eyes blazing in almost Maurice Richard-like fashion.
This is a new St. Louis and a new situation for the team. The pressure is on him and his squad in a way that it’s never been since he began coaching the club in early 2022.
The team was coming off a horrendous game Tuesday at the Bell Centre, with the Seattle Kraken trouncing them 8-2, and clearly everyone expected St. Louis’s troops to deliver a strong performance Thursday to make up for that no-show two nights earlier. But once again, the game revealed the weaknesses within this fragile team.
The defensive coverage is simply a hot mess. Some blame this on the youth of the D corps, others blame it on the coach’s defensive system that clearly just doesn’t work for these players. Whatever the case, other teams are feasting on the Habs in their own zone. But you’re also not going to win too many games when you only take 16 shots on the opposing goalie.
The forwards also aren’t getting the job done. The CH had a one-minute-and-35-second five-on-three in the third and they couldn’t score. Astonishingly enough, given how poorly he’s been playing, St. Louis put Joel Armia on that two-man advantage.
The Canadiens had a fairly good first period and the two teams came out tied at 0-0. But then Tom Wilson redirected an Alexander Ovechkin shot/pass to put the Caps in front by one.
Then Cole Caufield scored his tenth of the season on yet another of his beautiful wrist shots, for a power-play marker.
The Habs proceeded to go up by one when Brendan Gallagher redirected a hard shot from Lane Hutson for his fourth of the campaign.
Brandon Duhaime scored to tie it up at 2-2 and less than a minute later Washington took the lead again when Christian Dvorak blindly passed the puck from behind his own net right on to the stick of Jakub Vrana in the slot.
Captain Nick Suzuki ended the rollercoaster of a period by whipping one past former Habs netminder Charlie Lindgren, to finish the second frame knotted up at 3-3.
But it all fell apart for Montreal in the third, with one defensive mistake after another, leading to goals by Connor McMichael, Aliaksei Protas, and Ovechkin, who put the puck in the back of the net for the 858th time in his career, coming one goal closer to Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894.
All you need to know about the Canadiens’ woes in their own zone is that it was Caufield, a winger, stuck by the side of the net trying to chase McMichael when he scored to make it 4-3. This is not what you want to see.
On the Ovechkin goal, it’s Mike Matheson who messes up, bobbling the puck just to the left of goalie Cayden Primeau and next thing you know Ovie has almost an empty net to score into. It was just that kind of night.
Here are some of the top comments from the liveblog faithful (and yes they are not a happy bunch):
This team is outplayed, out chanced, out muscled, and gives up 3-6 shifts a game where they are literally pinned down, and guys are pulling 2- and 3-minute shifts. That can happen once every FEW GAMES, not a few times nightly. And as I have been saying since 2022, get rid of Dvorak. Sit him. His best contribution is being out of the lineup. — Simon Berdugo
Well I’m not 100% sure what kind of defensive system they are trying to play, and I don’t think they do either. Whatever it is, it certainly is not working. To simply say the coverage is poor is the biggest understatement since WW1 was called a scuffle. They simply have to get that figured out. On a positive note, Hutson’s offensive game was outstanding. — Doug Kirkby
Our team needs a reset on the rebuild. — Bob Taylor How many blowouts do we have to endure? — Derek Stevens