MONTREAL — In the aftermath of the humbling and sobering loss the New York Rangers handed the Montreal Canadiens Tuesday, I started thinking about the conversation I had with Martin St. Louis prior to the start of last season.
Sitting in the press conference room at the Canadiens’ practice facility in Brossard, Que., I asked the coach to define the identity he wanted his team to play to.
“I want us to be a team that’s tough to play against on both sides because we’re organized, we’re playing with some intelligence, and we’re playing connected on both sides,” he said. “That means you have to work physically, but you have to be working mentally, too.”
I imagine that St. Louis is reasonably frustrated the Canadiens are straying so far from all of that to start this season, especially after watching them take several steps to establish that identity last season.
They may have finished 28th in the standings then, but they were mostly organized at five-on-five, connected on both sides of the puck, physically and mentally engaged, hard-working, relentless and, as a result, much harder to play against than their record indicated. Hence appearing in more games settled by a single goal than any other team in the league.
It’s been markedly different so far this year, which was really highlighted in the debacle against the Rangers.
The Canadiens are way too easy to play against — a thing no coach wants to hear about his team and a thing no player should accept — and they can’t be in denial about it after that game.
They must face the truth, not just about the egregious (and totally avoidable) mistakes they made in the first period against New York but also about their recurrent faults since opening against Toronto.
St. Louis can’t tackle them all at once, so he chose to focus on their defensive-zone coverage, which he said is too passive, with players too content to be well positioned between the puck and the scoring areas and too reluctant to aggressively kill a play when the opportunity presents itself.
It’s something the Canadiens need to work on immediately, but St. Louis has been saying since the start of the season that there’s much more they can do to keep the puck from their own zone, and I think sorting that out now is just as important.
For a team that (justifiably) considers its forecheck a strength, the Canadiens don’t get to it nearly as often as they need to.
They’ve partially addressed that over the last two games by not feeding their opponent’s transition game with careless, low-percentage plays at the offensive blue line as often as they did through the first five games of the season.
However, a pervasive trend from the start of the season, which persisted against the Rangers, needs to be addressed — their lack of physical engagement on the forecheck.
St. Louis had a line last season that really resonates right now.
“In this league, when you forecheck space, it’s really hard to steal the puck. You’ve got to forecheck people,” he said back in November after the Canadiens were dismantled by the Bruins in a 5-2 loss in Boston.
Through most of this October, the Canadiens have too often been forechecking space instead of people. It’s why they rank 31st in the NHL in offensive-zone takeaways at five-on-five, according to SportLogiq.
They’re particularly weak on the first wave, where they’re arriving late and failing to apply the necessary physical pressure to keep the puck further away from their own zone. That, coupled with the resistance to chip pucks deep through the first five games, explains why they rank 29th in the league at five-on-five in suppressing clean zone exits via passes.
It also helps explain why the Canadiens have been the seventh-best team in the league so far at denying controlled zone exits (where a player skates the puck out in possession). They’re late on the forecheck, which gives their opposition less space to skate with the puck but more space to pass it out after it’s retrieved.
This isn’t a tactical issue; it’s a mental and physical engagement issue that must be corrected immediately. The Canadiens have proven that when they’re connected and willing to get in hard on the first wave of the forecheck, it bears fruit.
They rank 16th in the league at five-on-five in scoring chances created off the forecheck per 60 minutes, which tells you their tactics are far from bad when they actually execute them. They also rank 10th in the league in scoring chances off the cycle at five-on-five per 60, reinforcing the notion that their issue isn’t tactical.
St. Louis always talks about how getting pucks deep and hitting isn’t fun, but it’s something you have to do like you love it in order to make it hard on the opposition. Watching the Canadiens throw just four hits in the first period of the Rangers game — a period in which the Rangers had the puck more than they did — is a sample of making the game too easy.
Another is how frequently they give up their own blue line without any resistance, even when they have good backpressure from their forwards.
Go back and watch the fifth goal the Rangers scored 8:55 into the second period. The goal St. Louis said really deflated the Canadiens after they cut the deficit to two. Everyone focused on the result — a very stoppable shot from Braden Schneider that Cayden Primeau waved at and missed with his glove — but there was no reason for that play to even develop in the first place.
Look at this:
This is essentially a one-on-three situation, with Christian Dvorak angling New York’s Filip Chytil right into Lane Hutson. Hutson must step up on Chytil but instead backs off the line and throws an ineffective stick check while continuing to back up, giving Chytil the space to turn and wait for Schneider on the second wave.
Hutson can be forgiven for not keeping the proper gap here. He’s 20, playing in his ninth NHL game, and has time to work on this — and many other things.
But what Hutson did on this play is a feature of what all the Canadiens’ defencemen have been doing this season, even when their forwards are doing their job on the backcheck. It’s led to the team placing 30th in denying controlled zone entries per 60 at five-on-five.
Add all these issues up, and there’s a certain level of aggression missing from the Canadiens in all aspects of their defensive play. Part of correcting that requires the players to be organized and connected, which can be facilitated by better communication among them. The other part of it is putting in the physical work.
St. Louis doesn’t need to draw up a new plan. He needs to reinforce the one he has and get the Canadiens back to work and back to the identity he helped them establish over the last year.
At 2-4-1, and after going four games without a win, the players need to respond to his message with urgency. If they don’t, frustration will be the least of their problems.
