The Montreal Canadiens fell 4-3 to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden Saturday afternoon.
The Rangers force teams to be at their best, and the Canadiens gave a good account of themselves, allowing the winning goal with just 23 seconds left.
It feels as though it’s all going wrong with the Montreal Canadiens, but they actually entered their weekend afternoon series against the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins with a 4-2-1 record in their last seven.
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Head Coach Martin St. Louis changed up just about every line and pairing for this contest, and he got a good response from his troops. A new line that he tried had some good moments – including the first goal. It was Christian Dvorak in the middle for Brendan Gallagher and Juraj Slafkovsky.
That’s an interesting threesome because Gallagher will always drag his mates into the fight, but if his mates don’t have any talent, it really doesn’t matter. Gallagher excels at bringing out the best in good players.
Dvorak should do more overall. He has the talent to do more, and there has been an expectation since he was acquired for a first-round draft choice that he’s a better player than he has shown in Montreal.
Slafkovsky is in the learning phase of his career and one of the things that he can learn is to compete harder. Slafkovsky can benefit from seeing just how much Gallagher works and demands from his mates.
On the first goal, it was Gallagher who won the puck in the corner. He then fed Slafkovsky who battled for his puck win, then Slafkovsky fed Mike Matheson in front of the net for the goal. It was a goal that demanded hard work from players who have the balance and strength on their skates to achieve wins in puck battles.
Nick Suzuki had a strong game with Cole Caufield and Alex Newhook. Suzuki kept in a puck at the blue line in the third period. He fed to Cole Caufield who somehow find the five-hole even though the gap was the diameter of the puck. Caufield has 14 on the season. He is on pace for exactly 50 goals in the season.
Late in the third period, the Canadiens tied the game on a tremendous play from the same line. It was Caufield with the pass to free Lane Hutson who faked a shot and slid a perfect pass cross-crease to Suzuki for the tally. Jonathan Quick had no chance.
It was also one of Kirby Dach’s best games of the season as he lined up with Josh Anderson and Joshua Roy. Dach played with a lot of edge. The Canadiens actually won the analytics battle but fell short in special teams allowing three power-play goals. Suzuki’s line had an 87 Goals Expected share and Dach’s line had a 77.
It’s not always beautiful, this game of hockey. The Rangers make you play an ‘ice-pack’ game with a lot of tough and known battlers like Jacob Trouba, Chris Kreider, Sam Carrick and Matt Rempe in their line-up.
If you are not ready to fight, this Rangers team will make you look like cowards. The Canadiens were ready to battle – they did not back down; they were not intimidated. Part of becoming a regular NHL is understanding there are a lot of elements to the sport and they aren’t all pretty.
Despite it being the last day of November, this one felt like a playoff game. It was also a good chance for a young line-up to learn lessons well. They got angry, and they got hungry to compete. That’s a good thing.
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Another of the NHL’s ridiculous half-measures is a concussion spotter watching the game upstairs. It’s a great idea, but it isn’t one that the league actually cares to do properly. The rules are discretionary and different spotters seem to have different standards.
In the first period, Josh Anderson sought revenge on Jacob Trouba for a vicious hit on Justin Barron the last time the clubs met. Many will argue that Trouba’s hit was clean, while here it was described as predatory. Ultimately it was a legal hit in the weird world that is the “principal point of contact” NHL: as long as any hit delivered involves contact with something else before crushing the head, then it’s fine.
The Canadiens clearly didn’t think it was clean because they couldn’t wait for Trouba to get on the ice – Anderson understood the assignment and pummelled him. Two times through the 55-second beatdown Trouba lost his legs. He was concussed: losing your legs from under you is a concussion symptom. However, it was apparently not a concussion symptom in the gondola at Madison Square Garden where the spotter remained. He never made a call downstairs to pull Trouba for evaluation. When Trouba’s major penalty ended, he got a series of stick-taps from the Rangers’ players on the bench. He then took his regular shift.
The NHL is perfectly happy to not penalize or suspend Trouba for his predatory hits. They are also fine with a spotter allowing the players to lose their equilibrium, instead of doing what they should know is appropriate. The NHL bylaws say that the spotter is looking for a player lying motionless, with coordination issues, or a blank look. The spotter didn’t see any coordination issues with Trouba’s legs buckling twice in 55 seconds after getting smashed on the chin. The legs must have buckled as a matter of coincidence.
Though the concussion spotter is a good idea, the NHL has only paid lip service to it.
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Ivan Demidov started his rookie season in the KHL with the best numbers ever for a ‘draft plus one’ pick. One month later, Demidov was benched and it wasn’t because of poor play.
Demidov counted a magnificent 18 points in his first 20 games in the KHL for SKA St. Petersburg. He was the rookie of the month in the league. He was even near the top of the scoring in the entire league.
With all of the success, the expectation was that Demidov would move from averaging 11 minutes a game to perhaps as high as 17 minutes and get elevated to the top line. What happened instead is the stuff of Russian legend.
Demidov had his ice time diminished game by game, and Saturday morning in a 7-5 win for SKA, the phenom sat on the bench for the entire game – he didn’t get a single shift. ESPN’s world’s best hockey prospect sat there for 60 minutes and watched it all race by him.
He’s been regularly getting five minutes and even less recently. All of these games count against his scoring record, so 18 points in 20 games is now 20 points in 31 games. Those not paying attention to details might think Demidov’s struggling.
The truth is that his head coach is sabotaging his season. That head coach is also the money behind the SKA operation. Roman Rotenberg isn’t actually a hockey coach, he is an oligarch in the classic Russian style and he’s punishing Demidov for wanting to go to the NHL next season.
Rotenberg’s formal educational training was to lead Gazprom, a Russian oil and gas company, not a hockey roster. The equivalent level of preposterousness would be if Geoff Molson took over behind the Canadiens bench and then didn’t play Cole Caufield.
In Russia, if you have the money, you do anything you want. If you want to go from vice president of Gazprom to head coach of a hockey team, no one stops you. In fact, Rotenberg extended his own contract five seasons last year as head coach. No doubt his assessment of himself was that he thought he was excellent at coaching.
The worst part about this is Demidov can not leave. He won’t be able to get out of his contract this year, and the Canadiens won’t be able to throw money at this to change events. It’s a 68-game season in the KHL. SKA has played 31. This sad story has 37 games left in it.
The only hope is that the head coach decides that he wants to win games, instead of winning political points with his cronies.
No doubt the Canadiens can’t wait to get him to North America. Demidov is a young man with tremendous talent. He will likely be the first 100-point player for Montreal this century when he hits his stride, and no businessman who bought his way behind a hockey bench is going to change that.