Canadiens fans who paid big bucks for tickets to Thursday night’s game at the Bell Centre had reason to be upset or even angry.
The Canadiens went into the third period trailing the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2. But after the Penguins went up 5-2 at the 7:42 mark of the third period, the Canadiens basically quit competing and just rolled over and died. The result was a 9-2 loss with the Penguins scoring the most goals of any team in a game this season.
After the Penguins made it 7-2 with just over eight minutes left in the game the Bell Centre started to empty quickly with fans headed for the exits. Many of the fans who did stick around were booing as the Penguins added two more goals before the beating mercifully came to an end with the final siren. The Penguins outshot the Canadiens 14-6 in the third period.
In Year 3 of this rebuilding process for the Canadiens, fans paying big money for tickets aren’t expecting a Stanley Cup champion. But they do have a right to expect the players to compete hard — especially on home ice.
“It’s an awful feeling,” the Canadiens’ Brendan Gallagher said after the game about hearing the boos. “They deserve to boo. We’re not providing an entertaining product … it’s as simple as that. We’re disappointed in ourselves. But for us it’s learn from it and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
“To say it was not a good enough effort (in the third period) is an understatement,” Gallagher added. “It’s something that we need to correct.”
This marked the eighth time in 29 games this season that the Canadiens have allowed six goals or more and that has to reflect on head coach Martin St. Louis and his staff as well as the players. The lack of compete level in the third period against the Penguins also has to reflect on the man behind the bench.
I believe the last thing Kent Hughes, the executive vice-president of hockey operations, and general manager Kent Hughes want to do is fire St. Louis at this point and I don’t believe his job is in jeopardy. Player development continues to be the main focus in the rebuild, but the lack of compete level against the Penguins and the amount of goals the Canadiens are giving up on a pretty regular basis have to be a concern.
I asked St. Louis during his post-game news conference if he got upset or angry behind the bench while watching his team get pummelled by the Penguins.
“I don’t know if it was anger,” he said. “To me it was more disappointed. I think anger is an emotion. Disappointing is a feeling. Because I felt going into the third I was excited to see … I think we took two early penalties in the third. It’s hard to get some momentum and then the game just kind of slipped away. And after that the (chain came off).
“I don’t know … I think I was a little angry maybe on the fourth goal, the fifth goal, maybe,” St. Louis added. “But after that it was more disappointed than angry.”
Captain Nick Suzuki said it was embarrassing to see fans leaving the Bell Centre with eight minutes left in the game.
“I hate when that happens,” Suzuki said. “The booing was definitely earned from us tonight. We love playing at home and we got to be a lot better than that in the third.”
Defenceman Kaiden Guhle also said it was embarrassing the way the Canadiens played in the third period.
“It just seemed like after their 5-2 goal it was just that was it and it’s unacceptable for everyone, myself included,” Guhle said. “People come out to see us and watch us play and compete and spend their money and it’s unacceptable.”
Things won’t get easier Saturday when the Canadiens — who are in 29th place in the overall NHL standings with an 11-15-3 record — play the Jets in Winnipeg (7 p.m., Citytv, SNE, SNW, TVA Sports). The Jets are in first place in the overall standings with a 21-9-1 record and also have a plus-34 goal differential. The Canadiens have a minus-29 goal differential — the worst in the NHL.
“It doesn’t get any easier for us,” Gallagher said. “But we should have all the reason to respond with our best effort in Winnipeg. It’s a good challenge for us. I trust that our group will put forth a better effort.”
Meanwhile in New York
The New York Islanders beat the Chicago Blackhawks 5-4 Thursday night but their head coach, Patrick Roy, was upset after the game.
The reason is that the Islanders had a 5-1 lead with just over 12 minutes left, but barely held on for the win as goalie Ilya Sorokin stopped 11 of the 14 shots he faced in the third period while New York had only seven shots over the final 20 minutes.
“A win is a win and we play to win games,” Roy told reporters in New York after the game. “But I guess times have changed. Because in my days (as a Hall of Fame goalie with the Canadiens and Colorado Avalanche, winning four Stanley Cups) if my team would have done that to me I would break a stick in that room. I would be very upset to see my team playing like this in front of me. Ilya is a gentleman, he’s a first-class person, but that was unacceptable. We didn’t compete, we didn’t battle in front of the net in the last eight minutes, that’s unacceptable. We talked about it this morning to be stronger. Our goalie deserves more respect than this from ourselves.”
Canadiens goalies Sam Montembeault and Cayden Primeau also deserved more respect from their teammates in the third period Thursday night.
A moment to remember
I led off last week’s Stu’s Slapshots with an item on the positive influence Guhle’s parents had on him.
Guhle spoke about how his father Mark, a family doctor, and mother Carrianne weren’t really into hockey.
“They just wanted me to work hard, be a good teammate, be a good person and have fun,” said Guhle, who grew up in the Edmonton area. “Kind of the motto I’ve gone by and the advice I’ve gone by my whole life and in my career.”
Tim Stackhouse, who is from Guhle’s home town of of Sherwood Park, Alta., read Stu’s Slapshots last week and sent me an email to share a story about the 22-year-old Canadiens defenceman.
“This summer I was walking into a multisport rec centre in Sherwood Park to pick up my 11-year-old son from his summer rec program,” Stackhouse wrote. “Walking in, I recognize a Laval Rocket shirt on a young guy carrying a hockey bag. As he passes, I turn back and shout: ‘Kaiden!’ He turns. I smile and approach. I thank him for all he is doing with the Habs and inform him that I am a transplant — originally from New Brunswick — and self-proclaim as the biggest Habs fan in the Edmonton area. I ask him if he can wait for a minute so I can grab my son, ‘who will piss his pants if he meets you.’ He obliged!
“The kid was nervous and didn’t speak,” Stackhouse added. “Kaiden did all the talking. I felt like we were taking up his summer and tried to end the meeting, but Kaiden was in no rush. Made the kid’s summer — and even mine, really.”
Nice!
Another dad story
As noted in last week’s Stu’s Slapshots, I’ll try to share more stories about Canadiens players and their parents in this space.
After Monday’s morning skate at the Bell Centre, I had a chance to ask Jake Evans about how his parents helped him on his journey to the NHL.
Evans’s mother, Marilyn, is a family doctor, like Guhle’s father. Evans’s father, Wayne, is a retired salesman.
“He’s strictly a hockey fan now,” Evans said. “He worked from home once he got older, so he was basically my Uber driver.”
What’s the main lesson Evans learned from his parents while growing up in Toronto?
“Honestly, I’d say one is just being a good person, being nice to everyone,” Evans said. “Two is they had goals in mind. My dad, I guess, more sacrificed his professional goals to help us. Mainly me … my brother wasn’t very good at hockey. Helping me achieve my goals, he was always driving me and thinking about me. My mom was just a great mother.”
Evans’s brother Matt, who is two years older, works as an investment banker in New York.
“He’s the smart guy,” Evans said. “He’ll be the first one to say he wasn’t great at hockey. But we always played in the basement — me, him and my dad. We had a nice setup down there, so I think having that and playing against a guy older than you and competing against him helped. I played on his team my first couple of years, so my dad didn’t have to do too much driving.”
Evans’s parents were thrilled when he was able to earn a hockey scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, where he played for four years, became captain of the Fighting Irish in his senior season and earned a degree in management consulting.
“They weren’t pushing me to go to school, but I could tell they really wanted me to,” Evans said. “They were quite happy with that. I think my dad had more fun there than I did. He went to every single home game and quite a few football games.”
What is Evans’s favourite family hockey memory from his youth?
“We went on a family trip to Banff for skiing,” he said. “I was just a hockey nut. So they would wake up early with me at like 5 a.m. because of the time change that I couldn’t adjust to. We’d go and skate on the pond every morning and they were miserable the whole time because it was so early for them. But they did it for me because that’s all I wanted to do.”
I can see clearly now
Because of NCAA rules, defenceman Lane Hutson had to wear a full cage for facial protection during his two seasons at Boston University before joining the Canadiens.
Now he’s wearing a half-visor and has opted to go without a mouth guard since it can make it hard to breathe and talk.
“I like the visor better,” Hutson said. “You get hit in the face with an elbow, the cage always jerks up and hits you in the chin and that doesn’t feel too great. But, obviously, you don’t take so many sticks (to the face). It’s not too big of a difference for me. I just try to play the same game and you just hope you don’t get anything to the face.”
Before the start of the 2013-14 season, the NHL mandated that all players with less than 25 games of experience in the league must wear a visor.
There are only five players left in the NHL who don’t wear a visor: Ryan O’Reilly of the Nashville Predators, Jamie Benn of the Dallas Stars, Zach Bogosian of the Minnesota Wild, Ryan Reaves of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Matt Martin of the New York Islanders.
“I can’t imagine that at all,” Hutson said about playing without a visor. “Those guys … it’s pretty crazy.”
Blurred vision
St. Louis also wore a full cage during his four seasons playing at the University of Vermont before making his NHL debut with the Calgary Flames in 1998-99.
St. Louis decided to play with no facial protection in the NHL. That changed when during the morning skate before his 500th NHL game with the Tampa Bay Lightning he took a puck in the eye and suffered six tears to his pupil. He started to wear a visor after that and his vision has never again been the same in that eye.
When St. Louis entered the NHL there was peer pressure not to wear a visor because it was looked upon by many as a sign of weakness if you did. St. Louis said he couldn’t wait to play with no facial protection.
“You grew up watching the NHL and guys wearing nothing and I think it was one of the things that looked cool,” St. Louis said.
Until you get a puck in the eye.
“Yes,” St. Louis said. “I came in the league, I was a small player and the league was big boys. For me, at the time, I definitely wanted to show guys that I wasn’t scared. I’m not saying that was smart. At the time, the era that I came in, I think I had to prove to people that I could play with the big boys and having no shield maybe helped me like, ‘Hey, he’s got some toughness,’ I guess. Not that I was fighting or anything. It was just an era.
“But, honestly, there’s nothing like feeling the wind in your face on the ice,” he added. “It’s pretty cool. It’s like the outdoor rinks, going out and skating with just a tuque on. That feeling of the wind blowing in your face as a hockey player is an unbelievable feeling and to get to do that in the NHL was pretty cool. But you have to adapt and I feel like the game was just speeding up and the way people were shooting the puck and the stick on puck and the tips and stuff. Obviously, I took a puck in the eye — that made me reassess the coolness. I can’t imagine right now playing in the league without a shield the way the game is being played.”
No full cages in NHL
Evans also played with a full facial cage during his four seasons at Notre Dame.
I asked him if he ever sees a day when an NHL player would choose to wear a full cage on a regular basis — not just after suffering a facial injury.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think any of the players want to wear a full cage, either. I think once you go to a visor you don’t want to go back.”
I asked Hutson the same question.
“I don’t even think you can, honestly,” Hutson said about someone wearing a full cage on a regular basis in the NHL. “Unless you’re hurt I don’t think you can.”
After speaking with Hutson I asked St. Louis if that was the case and he wasn’t sure. So I reached out to Jonathan Weatherdon, the senior director of communications for the NHLPA, and it turns out that Hutson is correct.
You learn something new every day.
Weatherdon sent me an email with NHL Rule 9.8 concerning Dangerous Equipment:
“The use of pads or protectors made of metal, or of any other material likely to cause injury to an opposing player is prohibited. Referees have the authority to prohibit any equipment they feel may cause injury to any participant in the game. Failure to comply with the referees’ instructions shall result in a minor penalty for delay of game. A mask or protector of a design approved by the league may be worn by a player who has sustained a facial injury. In the first instance, the injured player shall be entitled to wear any protective device prescribed by the club doctor. If any opposing club objects to the device, it may record its objection with the commissioner.”
No goals for Hutson
Hutson leads all NHL rookies with 19 assists this season, but he’s still looking for his first goal with the Canadiens.
St. Louis is surprised Hutson hasn’t scored, but he’s not concerned.
“I guess I’m surprised in a way because I feel he’s had a lot of chances … he’s hit posts,” St. Louis said. “But he does so much on the ice that I know he’s going to score goals in this league. I’m not really worried about it.
“There’s plenty of ways to quantify offence,” St. Louis added. “Obviously, scoring goals is one of them, but there’s other stuff on the ice that helps our offence and he’s a big part of that. I don’t think any of us are worried that Lane Hutson hasn’t scored. I don’t think he’s pressing. I think he’s just playing the game.”
St. Louis has also been impressed by Hutson’s defensive play, despite the rookie’s minus-14 differential.
“I didn’t know that he had that defensive compete in him,” St. Louis said. “I think everybody when they talk about Lane up to now — before he got to the NHL — they all talk about his offensive side and he’s not a big guy and can he defend in this league and this and that. So, for me, I didn’t know. But once I saw his compete level defensively it’s something that impressed me at the time. It’s something I learned because I didn’t know he had that. Not that I thought he didn’t have that, but I didn’t know that he had that.”