December is a hectic month for everyone with the Holidays coming up, but it’s going to be one crazy month for the Montreal Canadiens players as well, since their schedule is jam-packed. Last night, they played their third game in four nights when they hosted the Tampa Bay Lightning, and they did it with Jakub Dobes in net once again.
The visitors were winless in their last four games and had been shut out in their previous two tilts, on top of being without all-star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. Furthermore, Jon Cooper’s men were playing the second game of a back-to-back after taking on the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night.
Interestingly, four teams had two scouts at the Bell Centre for this game, and three of them had a goalie scout present, as Dobes was playing his third game in four nights. If they were there to have a closer look at him, he wouldn’t have made a particularly good impression.
An Awful First Frame
The Bolts wasted no time in showing they meant business. Twenty-nine seconds in, Charles-Edouard D’Astous levelled Brendan Gallagher, and it turned out to be a perfect metaphor for the first frame.
The visitors dominated play in the first frame, outshouting the Canadiens 15-6. Tampa scored its first goal on its second shot on net as Brayden Point easily got past Jayden Struble to get in all alone on the Canadiens’ netminder.
Their second goal came on a Pontus Holmberg breakaway as Ivan Demidov made an errant pass on the power play, right on cue for Holmberg to collect it. Dobes gave up a third goal on a Nikita Kucherov one-timer after losing his stick in a desperate attempt to freeze the puck.
It’s not that the Canadiens didn’t try to shoot, but most of their shots ended up in the netting behind the goal rather than on the net they actually needed to score on. Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki really struggled to hit the net, which is never good news for the Habs.
Martin St-Louis allowed Dobes to finish the period, but elected to start the second frame with Samuel Montembeault in the net. The change made little difference: Dobes finished the game with a .786 save percentage, allowing three goals on 14 shots, while Montembeault gave up three goals on 13 shots, for a .769 SV%.
Power Play Changes
In the first frame, Zachary Bolduc was back on the first power, even though he remains on the fourth line. Meanwhile, both Caufield and Suzuki were double-shifted on the second unit, meaning that Demidov still had the benefit of playing with them.
It was the second unit that produced the Canadiens' first and only goal as Demidov entered the zone crossing with Oliver Kapanen before making a cross-zone pass to Suzuki, who rang his shot off the post. Still, Kapanen showed excellent hand-eye coordination to bat it in mid-air. It was his ninth goal, which allowed him to tie Beckett Senecky for the lead in rookie goal scoring. The Finn now has the same number of goals as Juraj Slafkovsky, meaning they share second place on the team behind Cole Caufield, who has 16.
The goal must have come as a relief for Kapanen, who had missed a couple of chances off Demidov's setups in the first frame. The late-period goal should have been a boost to start the third frame, but it wasn’t. On the contrary, Tampa scored 1:22 into the final frame, and that was one goal too many. For the rest of the game, the Canadiens lacked jump, confidence and even the will to compete; they actually looked like they were “sleepskating” out there. Tampa earned the two points with a decisive 6-1 win.
Home Sweet Home?
After 29 games, the Canadiens have an 8-3-2 record on the road but a 7-8-1 record at home. To have a chance of making the playoffs, they need to improve their home performance. You cannot be outplayed and manhandled when you control the matchups. On that topic, the bench boss explained:
We’ve got to be better at home. My press conferences at home are starting to be boring. […] I think we give up too many early goals. At the start of periods, I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but it’s becoming a trend. I’ve got to correct that trend.
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Asked if it was due to the Habs struggling to shake off the disappointment of giving up a goal, St-Louis said:
There’s a mental element to it, you’ve mental strength has got to be stronger than your emotions. We’re being testing mentally right now.
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In the dressing room, Alexandre Carrier discussed stopping the hemorrhage, which brought me back to last season, when the team kept getting blown out and couldn’t stop the bleeding after giving up a couple of goals at home. The start of the season might have made us think that was now a thing of the past, but the last month says otherwise.
Calling In Some Reinforcements
After the game, the Canadiens announced that they had called up goaltender Jacob Fowler, defenseman Adam Engstrom, and forward Owen Beck from the Laval Rocket. Regardless of how you look at it, this should send a message to the players. Of course, they always call up players to go on the road, but they never call up a goaltender to go on the road. They only called up Kaapo Kahkonen because of Montembeault’s illness last weekend.
The Canadiens will practice at 11:00 in Brossard this morning before taking off for Pittsburgh in the afternoon. It will be interesting to see how St-Louis addresses the trend he has finally acknowledged is his biggest concern.
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