MONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens deserved what they got on Tuesday night — a humiliating loss punctuated by Brady Tkachuk, who scored the final goal for the Ottawa Senators before laughing his way back to the visiting bench.
Maybe the Senators’ captain couldn’t believe how easily he evaded coverage to make it 5-2 with under seven minutes remaining in regulation. Or maybe he just found it hilarious that the Canadiens repeatedly cleared the lanes for him and his teammates and gave them anything but the fight they were expecting before he added insult to injury.
This game was supposed to stoke a rivalry that had already burned white-hot from the pre-season punch-up in Quebec City through the first regular-season bout at the beginning of November. Every Canadiens player we spoke with in the morning seemed prepared to add another log to the fire.
But the home team ended up dropping a big one in the toilet.
“We just didn’t defend hard enough,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis.
It really is as simple as that.
What’s complicated to understand is why?
Why did Jake Evans and Josh Anderson, who are typically the Canadiens’ most reliable defensive forwards, get so crossed up on Ottawa’s opening goal, which came just 24 seconds after Juraj Slafkovsky gave the Canadiens a 1-0 lead?
Why did Zachary Bolduc get so far away from Artem Zub that he couldn’t even identify that he had lost him before Zub was left all alone to make not one but two moves on Samuel Montembeault for a goal that made it 2-1 near the end of the first period?
Why was Jake Sanderson given a free pass to Montembeault’s net on the goal that made it 3-1 Ottawa in the sixth minute of the second period?
Why did Lane Hutson lose Drake Batherson on Ottawa’s fourth goal before losing Tkachuk on their fifth?
Don’t say it’s the system.
“You can have all the structure you want, but attitude is what comes first,” said St. Louis. “The structure, if I show clips, they can all see, they can teach it themselves. They know the rules, they know everything, so it’s an attitude.”
The Canadiens had the wrong one in this game, and they paid for it.
They’ve been paying dearly for not quite having the exact right attitude since the start of November.
Since the Canadiens beat the Senators 4-3 in overtime on the first of that month, they’ve lost nine of 13 games.
Towards the start of that run, they mismanaged the puck too often and got disconnected on the forecheck. In the middle of it, after fixing some of those issues, they fumbled in the neutral zone. And after addressing the problems with their back pressure to collect three consecutive wins, the Canadiens lost 7-2 in Colorado with a game plan St. Louis said was too passive.
He took the blame for it and urged the Canadiens to be more aggressive on the puck against the Senators, to get back to the identity he felt they had lost over their last three or four games.
They adjusted up the ice, but at a cost down near their own goaltender, who was once again far more fallible than he should’ve been.
And so, they got embarrassed by their most bitter rival, whose captain rightfully rubbed it in.
It wouldn’t be the worst idea for the Canadiens to watch Tkachuk celebrating that backbreaking goal on repeat before taking on the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday. If that’s what it’ll take for them to play with the level of effort and concentration required to string together play in all three zones, they should consider it.
Because it’s got to be exhausting fixing one problem while creating another.
“It’s just unacceptable,” said Cole Caufield. “Our whole D-zone today was lack of maybe effort or being ready to go, but tired of losing due to one-on-one battles. You’ve got to find your guy and you’ve got to win your battle and keep him on the outside and do your job.”
The Canadiens might be the youngest team in the league, but as St. Louis said, “it shouldn’t be an excuse.”
They have enough experience to know they won’t win games by cheating the details. And if they didn’t know what cheating them in the defensive zone would lead to, they found out on Tuesday.
