MONTREAL — Mathieu Darche deadpans the line of the night on his celebratory ride down the Bell Centre elevator following a come-from-behind win over the Montreal Canadiens for his New York Islanders.
“I think the kid’s going to be alright,” the general manager says.
The kid, of course, is Matthew Schaefer, who singlehandedly undid a two-goal Canadiens lead in just 55 seconds to set a new NHL record.
“He’s a special player,” Darche says.
This time, he’s not joking.
On Thursday, Schaefer became the first 18-year-old defenceman in NHL history to reach 18 goals in a season.
Keep in mind he has 23 more games to pad his lead.
There’s special, and then there’s special, and it’s pretty clear which category the kid fits into.
We can’t think of a player in recent history that’s stepped into the league and taken it by storm from the backend the way Schaefer has at his age. On top of all those goals, he’s also got 23 assists, and there are only 17 other players averaging more ice-time per game than his 24:05.
All those players, however, are at least three years older, and most of them are closer to 10 years older, and none of them are outwardly more mature in the way they play.
“He’s their guy back there in every situation,” said Canadiens defenceman Noah Dobson, who once posted 70 points with the Islanders but was never depended on quite the same way over his six seasons in New York.
In Montreal, Dobson, who also scored two goals in his very first game against his former team Thursday, has more responsibility than he ever had with the Islanders. But he doesn’t have to do it all on a blue line that includes dynamic players like Mike Matheson and Lane Hutson.
And though Schaefer is well insulated by veterans Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock, even they’re looking to him to put his stamp on every game.
Some indiscipline from the Canadiens opened the door for Schaefer to do it in Thursday’s game. They took two penalties in seven seconds of the final minutes of the second period to give the Islanders a five-on-three, and he walked right through and buried goals on successive shots to tie things up.
And while Schaefer didn’t factor into the final two goals of the night — one from Anders Lee with 1:41 to go in regulation, and one from Jean-Gabriel Pageau 1:46 into overtime — he drove the wave of pressure the Islanders created through the final 10 minutes of regulation and withstood what Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson threw at him through the first 100 seconds of overtime.
Before all that Schaefer got hit early and often, and he just kept bouncing back up and forward.
“There’s gonna be nights where you’re getting pounded and things like that. You’re getting big hits. You’re taking them and you’re falling. It’s hockey,” he said. “It’s fun. It’s fun when other teams are coming after you. They’re throwing hits and things like that. But it makes the game fun cause you know everyone’s throwing hits, everyone’s battling and working hard.”
I think the kid’s going to be alright.
The Canadiens will be fine, too.
They were rusty through the first five minutes, dynamic through the next 30, strong after surrendering the first lead, and just a bit too tentative after capturing the second one Caufield gave them on the power play 9:11 into the third period.
“Last 10 minutes, I feel like we let them play with the puck too much,” said Martin St. Louis. “We have to be able to still generate some offensive time, and you’ve got to be calculated with what you do with (the puck) through the neutral zone, be selective with your choice of play in the o-zone that allows you to just extend and make them defend a little bit. But we didn’t really make them defend in the last 10 minutes. They kept coming. And I feel like we were defending pretty good, but at the end they pulled the goalie and got the extra guy and it’s something we talked about, and we didn’t get the job done.”
It’s happened more than the Canadiens would like this season, but that’s part of being the youngest team in the league.
Meanwhile, the youngest player in the NHL doesn’t appear to be experiencing any growing pains.
“He’s very dynamic,” Caufield said of Schaefer. “Obviously, you hear a lot about him throughout the league, and it’s our first time playing him and he’s somebody you can’t take lightly, and he showed us that tonight. Thought he was very good tonight.”
Schaefer had two goals on three shots, he had seven attempts, he blocked two shots, and he spent 90 per cent of his five-on-five minutes against Montreal’s top line and finished plus-1.
Talk about a memorable first night at the Bell Centre.
“It was so cool,” Schaefer said. “It was packed, they were doing the wave, they’re yelling… It was a great night…”
It was one of many over which the kid has been better than alright.
