MONTREAL — If you want a sense of how much the reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers respect the Montreal Canadiens, you can go back and watch the third period of what turned out to be their fourth consecutive loss to them this season.
You’ll see a Florida team leading 2-1, carefully placing pucks deep in Montreal’s end, pressuring hard on the forecheck while pushing hard on the backcheck to not give the Canadiens any numerical advantages. When they had chances to cross the offensive blue line in possession of the puck, they navigated them carefully, keeping every play moving north instead of east-west because that’s what good teams do, whether they’re leading by one or trailing by one late in games.
It’s what great ones do against teams they know can burn them, and the Panthers made it clear, even before playing this game and losing it 3-2, that they knew they were playing an opponent that could burn them.
Brad Marchand, who took part in some early-season beatdowns the Boston Bruins gave the Canadiens, called this late-season edition of the team “completely different” after Florida’s morning skate on Tuesday.
“When you see star players committed like theirs are to defence, that’s when it really starts to flip,” the 36-year-old Cup winner said. “That’s when teams start to become good, and then good teams become great.”
“(The Canadiens) definitely changed the way they played, or the way people thought they played,” said Seth Jones. “They play a hard, direct game. They get pucks in and are pretty physical. They get in on the forecheck and run a man-on-man all over the ice defensively. They’re a tight-gap team. They’re definitely a team that plays very desperate.”
Nate Schmidt, who lines up on the blue line next to Jones, made the comment about the Canadiens that resonated most by night’s end: “Almost all the hope plays in their game are gone.”
For as frustrating as it must’ve been for the Canadiens to constantly run into walls the Panthers put up after pulling ahead 2-1, they didn’t force a single play until Patrik Laine hooked a pass to no one and ended up icing the puck with exactly 30 seconds remaining in regulation.
The Canadiens could’ve panicked right then and there. Sam Montembeault was forced to return to Montreal’s net and, as Nick Suzuki said after the game, going back to five-on-five for a defensive-zone draw with everyone on their side already tired was anything but an ideal situation to manufacture a goal.
But the Canadiens won possession of the puck, and Juraj Slafkovsky did the opposite of panic when it got to his stick as he was skating towards the back of Montreal’s net.
Slafkovsky stopped, turned in the opposite direction and found Lane Hutson with a stretch pass that gave the Canadiens a three-on-two rush.
Hutson put the puck on net, it bounced through Panthers forward Sam Reinhart near the goal line, and Suzuki picked it up beside the goal, settled it, and popped it in with nine seconds to play in regulation.
“You’ve got to believe in the hockey gods,” Suzuki later said, “so keep doing the right things, and bounces will come.”
The Canadiens had two terrible ones go against them after establishing a 1-0 lead with a great start to the game. Niko Mikkola and Mackie Sameskevich took shots that banked off Jake Evans and Kaiden Guhle to give the Panthers their two goals, and they were bounces earned through consistently direct play.
Suzuki’s game-tying goal was no different — a good bounce the Canadiens earned through consistently direct play.
It helped him establish a new career high in points (78) before he scored the winner 29 seconds into overtime, giving the Canadiens an outcome they deserved.
“I just think we’re comfortable in these games,” said Brendan Gallagher. “Even going back to last year, we kind of learned to play this style, and it didn’t come without growing pains…”
The Canadiens lost the most one-goal games in the NHL then.
Now they’ve found a way to win them.
“They get a couple of bounces, and I was really happy with the way it didn’t change the way we were playing,” said Gallagher. “That’s the way you win this time of year…”
You win with good goaltending, and Montembeault provided it with 25 saves. He came up with his biggest ones when he had to against the Panthers, just as he has all season.
You win with stars playing like stars, and Suzuki and Hutson did that, with the latter picking up points 60, 61 and 62 to continue one of the greatest rookie seasons a defenceman has ever authored in this league.
You win with role players like Gallagher, Josh Anderson and Christian Dvorak playing their roles to perfection, as they did by combining for a goal and earning a 75 per cent share of the expected ones in their 10:04 at five-on-five.
On the collective, you win by doing what Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis has been convincing his team to do all season. He’s become a broken record about “calculated risk,” about “doing the things that up the percentages of winning,” about “just focusing on the next action,” and his team has listened — especially against these Panthers.
The Canadiens keeping their composure in Tuesday’s frustrating third period was the pinnacle of that.
“We weren’t risking, we weren’t chasing it, we stayed kind of calculated,” said St. Louis. “We had opportunities. We know you’re going to create opportunities, you just cannot give up something the other way because the game’s probably over at that point in time against that team. I was happy with our patience.”
It earned the Canadiens the win that kept them in the second wild-card position in the Eastern Conference with eight games remaining in their season.
Their commitment earned them respect from their opponent before the game even began.
“I just think they’ve just really bought into the right style of play, and that’s really a hill for a young team to overcome,” said Jones. “When they do overcome that hill, the sky becomes the limit.”
