MONTREAL — Brendan Gallagher’s four-minute high-sticking penalty will be the focus of this 6-5 loss the Montreal Canadiens suffered to the Vegas Golden Knights Thursday, but it’s nothing but a distraction from the truth.
The Canadiens know the truth. They know it wasn’t Gallagher’s penalty that cost them the game; it was everything they did in the seconds leading up to it — the missed checks, the inability to close out plays, the failure to get the puck out of their zone — that was their undoing.
The Canadiens committed those errors all night, with coach Martin St. Louis saying afterwards, “We shot ourselves in the foot a lot.”
They seemingly fired the first bullet into their big toe right after the opening faceoff, knocking themselves on their heels and giving the Golden Knights momentum. And they pulled the trigger several more times in those first 20 minutes, allowing Vegas to get 18 shots on net and notch 41(!) attempts.
Some opportunistic shooting from Alex Newhook and Johnathan Kovacevic, coupled with absolute brilliance from Cayden Primeau, were the only reasons the Canadiens escaped that period up 2-0.
“We knew we were fortunate to be in that position,” said Kovacevic.
But the Canadiens didn’t exactly pivot thereafter, which the big defenceman also acknowledged.
“It just felt like it was one of those nights where we earned that fate,” Kovacevic said.
It wasn’t fully sealed when Gallagher missed a stick lift and ended up in the box with 2:51 remaining in the third period. The Canadiens were tied 4-4 in that instant and slicing open Pavel Dorofeyev’s mouth was ill-timed at best, no doubt.
But then they allowed two goals on the ensuing penalty kill and all but destroyed whatever chances they had of stealing this game away, and none of them were blaming Gallagher for that.
“The guy probably could’ve scored easily,” said Nick Suzuki of Dorofeyev, who was strolling into the slot unimpeded, with the puck on his stick, staring at the best opportunity he was going to get to bury the game when Gallagher caught him.
“Desperation play trying to save a goal,” added Suzuki. “Unlucky that he got it up high, but Gally knows what he’s doing. It’s not a dumb penalty, he’s just trying to save a goal and just unfortunate that he got him up high.”
Gallagher’s been on the wrong end of this too much already this season. He’s been watching helplessly from the penalty box in the final minutes of Montreal’s last two games, he has 18 penalty minutes through 17 games and, as St. Louis said, “It can’t happen.”
But the Canadiens also can’t approach a game against the reigning Stanley Cup champions—or any team in the league—the way they did Thursday. Not to detract from the Golden Knights taking advantage of it, from them erasing 2-0, 3-1, 4-3 leads and pressuring the Canadiens into countless mistakes, but there were adjustments to make that never got made.
“We helped them create offence,” said St. Louis. “They didn’t have to come back from 200 feet enough. We did some good things, still, but too many bad things. Against good teams, if you want to trade good things with bad things, it’s hard to win.”
He was about as frustrated as he gets after a loss, and rightfully so after the Canadiens played what he said earlier in the week was a four-game string he felt was as good as any he had seen from them since taking over their bench in February of 2022.
That last game—a 2-1 loss to the Calgary Flames—saw them generate 37 scoring chances and left him extremely encouraged by the process regardless of the result.
But this loss to Vegas was discouraging.
“I’m honest with the players,” said St. Louis. “Against Calgary, we were losing on the scoreboard, but they weren’t beating us. Today, we were winning on the scoreboard, but they were beating us. So you have to be honest, and tonight we played with fire and got burned.”
Gallagher did, too. He allowed Dorofeyev to get behind him in the dying minutes and, whether he meant to or not, put himself in the last place he wanted to be in.
Jack Eichel scored less than one minute later. Then Mark Stone scored with 1:12 remaining. And when Suzuki said after the game, “You could kind of tell (Gallagher) was really mad in the box, and he seemed a little upset coming back in the room,” we’ll go out on a limb and suggest he was probably understating it.
Knowing Gallagher dating back to before his first season in the NHL, he was probably seeing red coming back in the room—even after Justin Barron made it 6-5 and the Canadiens came close to tying the game in the final second. He’s probably blaming himself for the loss.
But the Canadiens know what really cost them this game, and they know it was everything they did before and after that penalty.
“All I saw was him working his ass off to get back and defend that play,” said Kovacevic. “That’s what I saw. He’s doing all the right things, he’s working hard, he’s a leader for us, there’s no one in this room that’s pointing the finger at him. He shows us his heart every night, and we lean on that—a veteran guy with a big heart. We needed to get that kill for him.”
The Canadiens needed to do a lot of things they didn’t do against the Golden Knights.
