Yet another voyage across the continent for the Montreal Canadiens with a short two-game trip with stops in Salt Lake City and Dallas. If it seems that they are criss-crossing large distances, it is because they are.
The six games at home out of seven starting Saturday versus Toronto can’t come soon enough for a surely weary team. The Utah Hockey Club was on the agenda as the Canadiens tried to go three games above NHL. 500 for the first time this season.
They did it with a strong final 40 minutes outscoring Utah 5-3.
Wilde Horses
Two of the smallest and most disrespected players in the league are Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson. Both stood out yet again for the Canadiens.
Caufield was not picked for the USA squad for the Four Nations event, even though he is a point-per-game player and is sixth in the league in goals. Caufield is also the second highest scoring American in the NHL behind only Kyle Connor of the Winnipeg Jets. Somehow, that was not good enough.
Hutson is the most exciting player on the Canadiens averaging 23 minutes per game. He leads rookie scoring in the NHL. However, he is, depending on the betting site visited, the second or third favourite for the award.
Those two combined to set up Mike Matheson for the opening goal in the contest. It was the only good moment of the period for Montreal. Hutson’s assist meant a point in a fifth straight game. It’s the third time he has done that this season already.
Second period, and the Canadiens found their skating legs. They tied it on an absolutely gorgeous passing play on the rush. Alexandre Carrier has been such a solid addition to the right side of the blue line. He broke up the Utah rush, and started the Montreal rush. It ended with a perfect cross-ice pass by Alex Newhook to Patrik Laine to score his first even-strength goal this season.
Laine has 10 goals in 15 games this year with the first nine on the power play. Hilariously, though, the goal looked exactly the same as the first nine with Laine on the left side at the top of the circle firing a one timer into the top corner.
The second line continued to be the best on the night when the Canadiens took the lead 3-2. Hutson dangled until the opposition was dizzy. He then fed to a streaking Kirby Dach who made a terrific inside-out move for his seventh of the season.
Third period and the Hutson show continued. He won space streaking towards the net where he saw Caufield’s stick. Hutson basically ripped a shot off of it. Caufield with his 24th goal of the season. He is on pace for 46 goals. The Canadiens led 4-3.
Dach concluded the scoring with a wrist shot goal on the rush. Dach is starting to feel it. The player that he was before the ACL/MCL injury is returning. Eight goals is less than Dach expects of himself, but suddenly, he’s on pace for 16 goals which is not that poor coming out of reconstruction of the knee.
Dach becoming a second-line centre would cause such a tremendous ripple effect for the entire forward unit. A line of Dach looking like the third pick overall, Laine ripping shots, and the best prospect not in the NHL today Ivan Demidov showing his skill-set would be an exciting proposition.
The black hole on the entire club since Philip Danault left would finally be filled. If the Canadiens second line went from a 40 goal contribution to an 80 goal contribution, Montreal would go from a playoff hopeful to a playoff team.
For how dark the days were in October, they are full of light in the new year. Remarkable.
Wilde Goats
Not to point an arrow right at the chest of Michael Pezzetta but when a player gets in the line-up only seldomly, he can’t get a penalty on the first shift to cost the team. Pezzetta has to be smarter than to put the Canadiens behind that early.
An unfortunate penalty to Matheson followed Pezzetta’s minor, so Utah had a five-on-three for one minute and 25 seconds early in the contest. They converted on Samuel Montembeault. It’s difficult to write up a poorer start than that.
Utah has essentially the same record as Montreal, but one team had energy and the other was dead in the first period. Utah outshot Montreal 14-3. There are not 11 shots between these two teams in a single period. The Canadiens took four minors in the first 20 minutes which is usually a sign of cutting corners on the work rate.
It was a brutal first period, but while they allowed 14 in the first frame, they allowed 10 shots the rest of the night. That’s quite a recovery for Montreal as they keep the roll going.
That the Canadiens are in the playoff mix is extremely impressive considering they were 32nd in the league two months ago. However, they need to stay energetic until a league-wide reset during the Four Nations event.
The prediction here is if the Canadiens are in the playoff hunt at that break, they’ll fight for a playoff spot. This next set of games will be the decider. Seasons have ups and downs, and it’s going to be difficult to avoid a down in the next three weeks.
For now, celebrate the ten wins in their last 13 games. They have had some abysmal periods recently, but they’ve managed to get results. That’s a sign of a good hockey team.
Wilde Cards
The Canadiens have been fortunate this season on the injury front since the season began. They haven’t lost a single player long term after the pre-season injury to Patrik Laine. However, that good fortune ended in a bizarre manner in Salt Lake City.
Emil Heineman went for a walk in the Utah capital and he got in a car accident as a pedestrian. The Canadiens are reporting that Heineman suffered an upper-body injury and will be out of the line-up for three to four weeks. Thankfully, it was not worse, because everyone knows it could have been significantly worse.
That breaks up the best fourth line in the entire NHL as the Canadiens looked to Michael Pezzetta to fill out the spot short term. Wednesday, the club may call up a player from Laval, or they may wait until the weekend when they return home.
Also, off the beaten path this week is the club has officially hired Marc Bureau to help the club improve their face-off success. Bureau was one of the best at face-offs in his career. He has been also working with clubs in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Bureau has been working with the Canadiens unofficially for a couple months. Since then, Montreal has improved from 25th to 19th in the league in the dot. His greatest challenge is Kirby Dach who is terrible at face-offs year after year. This season, he is only 38.2 per cent.
If Dach improves to 50 percent, Bureau will be getting a lot of work in the future around the league. Dach in six seasons has never eclipsed 40 per cent. Bureau wasn’t hired to move the needle slightly on Christian Dvorak which he already has, or to add a couple points to Nick Suzuki. He was hired to improve the perennially bad.
The solace for Dach is the club is working on him, and he is not the worst. Connor Bedard is only 32 per cent from the dot. Tim Stutzle is 36 per cent. Jack Hughes is 38 per cent. Great players struggle, and it doesn’t automatically disqualify them from being centres as seems to be the popular sentiment in Montreal.