BROSSARD, Que. — The Montreal Canadiens are traveling to New York without Kaiden Guhle and with a few unresolved questions.
It’s unclear if Mike Matheson, who left Thursday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings after the first period, will be available against the New York Islanders on Saturday. Juraj Slafkovsky, who left Friday’s practice favouring his left shoulder, might not be available either. And coach Martin St. Louis is still contemplating whether or not he’ll make changes to his lines or if he’ll dress Samuel Montembeault as his starting goaltender.
What he is sure about is wanting the Canadiens to get to their A-game after two losses in a row brought them to 2-3-0 on the season.
St. Louis defined that as “playing with urgency, playing fast, applying pressure, and being organized and connected.”
More than anything, he wants to see the Canadiens manage the game better when they aren’t reaching the ceiling of what they’re capable of.
“I expect us to have a higher floor this season,” St. Louis said, “and I’m not happy with where our floor is at right now.”
Raising it will be challenging without Guhle, who has begun the season with a goal and four points in five games and been Montreal’s steadiest defenceman.
“I think he covers a lot of ice defensively,” said St. Louis. “He’s able to play through our offensive scheme, too.
“With Guhles, you know what you’re going to get every game. He’s obviously got a very high ceiling, but what I like the most about Guhles is his floor. The difference between a so-so game for Guhles and a good game is not big, and that’s great for a coach because you know what you’re getting out of a guy. You don’t know if you’re going to have his A-game, but his B-game is very good, and his C-game is pretty good too.”
If the coach knew exactly what he was going to get from the rest of his players, he’d be sure of them stopping the current losing streak at two come Saturday night.
St. Louis said he needs more consistency from Arber Xhekaj, who’s now 100 games into his NHL career and still searching for it.
Xhekaj knows.
“I’ve been in my own head a little bit and haven’t been myself,” he said after Friday’s practice. “Physicality and all that stuff and playing with emotion — that’s what’s going to help me.”
We’ll see if Xhekaj has a chance to get to all that Saturday, with Jayden Struble eager to play after missing the start of the season with an upper-body injury and Logan Mailloux recalled from the Laval Rocket after posting two goals and four points through his first four games in the American Hockey League this season.
Whomever among them playing against the Islanders will have a tall task of stabilizing things on the back end.
Achieving it will be necessary if Matheson can’t play or — in a best-case scenario — plays at less than 100 per cent.
They know it will be difficult in Guhle’s absence, without question.
“Guhles does so much for us. He plays against the best players in the world and he’s really evolving into a guy who’s obviously difficult to play against,” said Brendan Gallagher. “He’s smart, competitive, a really talented player. He’s one of those guys you don’t replace with one guy, so it’s one of those things that we’re going to have to have everyone step up as a group here.”
Christian Dvorak must redeem faceoff prowess in a hurry
He’s a player who’s won close to 53 per cent of the 5,632 faceoffs he’s taken in the NHL, a player who’s never dipped below 50 per cent in any of his prior seven seasons, so he knows 41.9 per cent through the first five games of this season isn’t going to cut it.
Especially given the role Dvorak holds with the Canadiens.
He’s their fourth-line centre, a player who’s certainly expected to help the team establish offensive flow from shift to shift but mainly counted on to take care of defensive assignments both at five-on-five and on the penalty kill.
A big part of that is winning draws — especially as the team’s go-to left-handed faceoff man — and not losing them as cleanly as he has in the defensive zone over the first five games.
On Thursday, against the Kings, Dvorak lost all three he took in there, with two leading to goals against. On the season, he’s won only three of 14 he’s taken in the defensive zone, which is the main reason he’s well under the standard he’s established in the dot throughout his career.
We asked Dvorak after Thursday’s game if the torn pectoral muscle he suffered last season has affected his ability to win faceoffs, but he said it wasn’t a factor at all.
“I was pretty good when I came back the last five games,” he said, and that basically checked out.
Dvorak was considerably better than he has been at the start of the season, winning 48 per cent of the faceoffs he took over the last five games of last season.
Now the 28-year-old must be at least that good moving forward.
“I haven’t been off to the greatest start with it so far this year and it’s cost us a couple of goals,” he said. “I definitely have to improve it.”
Dvorak is confident he will.
Meanwhile, his teammates need to do a better job of sorting things out when anyone on the team loses a faceoff.
The Canadiens didn’t do that as well as they should’ve, allowing one more goal in the 4-1 loss to the Kings when Alex Newhook lost a draw clean in his own end 1:37 into the second period.
Three goals against on cleanly lost faceoffs over the course of one game is unacceptable.
Newhook and Dvorak need to do better at winning theirs — or at least not losing them cleanly — and the Canadiens need to block shots when they don’t.
St. Louis said they appeared to have good intentions to do exactly that on those plays, but having good intentions isn’t enough to keep the puck out of your net.
Dvorak has full intention of making his own corrections to avoid those scenarios altogether. He has played well so far at both ends of the ice but must deliver on what has always been one of the main strengths of his game.
