MONTREAL — Samuel Montembeault slid right by his post and watched as the shot flew past him and into the far side of his wide-open net.
It didn’t come from Alex Ovechkin, the greatest goal scorer in history, who had already beaten him with the first shot of the night for the 905th tally of his career.
No, no, the shot came from fourth-line winger Ethen Frank, who came into Thursday’s game with all of four NHL goals to his name.
Frank then suddenly had six after beating Montembeault clean just 1:38 after shooting the puck right through him to give the Washington Capitals a 3-1 lead.
The No. 1 goaltender of the Montreal Canadiens then surrendered his net after literally surrendering his net.
Montembeault had stopped just seven of 10 shots — some of them seemingly by pure fluke — before being replaced by Jakub Dobes, who also found himself sliding out of his crease on the second goal to get by him over the next 10 shots Washington registered in the game.
Not a good image.
Neither is .750 in big, block letters — a combined save percentage that not even the high-flying 1976-77 Canadiens would’ve been able to overcome in this game.
There are problems, and then there are problems, and this one is a severe problem: The only thing more damaging to a hockey team than having a goaltender who can’t stop the puck is having two goaltenders who can’t stop the puck.
But that’s what the Canadiens have right now — at a time when they need the complete opposite, while they’re immersed in the longest slump of their season, which extended to five games with Thursday’s 8-4 loss to the Capitals.
Of course, the scoreline, which inflated thanks to two more goals Ovechkin scored for a hat trick, was indicative of more than just goaltending malaise.
At least that’s what Mike Matheson, Brendan Gallagher and Nick Suzuki acknowledged before coach Martin St. Louis talked about how disappointed he was to see the Canadiens resemble the team that lost 6-3 to the Capitals a little less than 13 months ago.
On that night (Halloween of 2024), the Canadiens were a horror show, leaving St. Louis so disgusted that he kept repeating they had puked all over themselves.
On this one, the coach spit out a list of things he’d have liked to have seen his team do better to help its goaltenders out.
“Put the puck deep, have less turnovers, defend better, get the puck out when you’re near the blue line, take less penalties, block shots, tie up sticks in front of the net,” he said, and though we believed him to be completely earnest and genuine, it’s not like he was about put his hand on the gear shifter of the tractor that ran over Montembeault and Dobes and flip it straight into reverse.
“Can our goaltenders play better? Yes,” St. Louis said. “They’re the first who will tell you that. You want me to say I want more saves? We all want more saves. For sure the goaltenders can play better, but I’m not going to blame everything on the goaltenders.”
It wouldn’t help.
Neither would a post-game sword swallowing competition for Montembeault and Dobes, hence the Canadiens’ public relations team wisely sparing them from meeting the media.
Montembeault hasn’t found solid ground since the season started, and he’s owned it. Dobes has lost his balance from the high peak he stood on after winning his first six games, and he has been accountable. Both goaltenders appear to be in free fall, and talking about it publicly wasn’t going to help them reach the latches to their parachutes.
We talked with them both on Wednesday about how challenging it can be to be under such a white-hot spotlight, and neither of them shrank from the conversation.
Their teammates know how badly they want to stand tall and make the difference, and they sympathize.
“There’s only certain positions in sports that are kind of, individually, you can put a lot of blame on yourself,” said Gallagher, who scored his first goal of the season Thursday.
“It’s a really tough position,” Gallagher added. “I can’t even relate to it. We have help, (the goaltender) is kind of the last line (of defence).”
His job is considerably more challenging when the details in front of the net fall off as much as they did against the Capitals.
They were sharp for the Canadiens in a 4-3 shootout loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, to the point that St. Louis said he felt his team was ready to “flip it and get going” against Washington.
But the Canadiens failed to do that at the start of Thursday’s game, and Montembeault left them chasing it after getting chased in the fourth minute of the second period.
Most of the “immature play” that followed was a direct result of that, with some of it undoubtedly exacerbated by the loss of Montreal’s most defensively sound forward, veteran Jake Evans, who took a charge and shoulder to the chin from Tom Wilson in the second period and didn’t return for the third.
There’s nothing to do about that now, but St. Louis said the Canadiens will have to face the truth about how they played and hopefully grow from it.
The other truth that can’t be ignored is that hockey is a game of mistakes, and you need your goaltender(s) to erase them from time to time.
With neither Montembeault nor Dobes doing that right now, the Canadiens must consider an alternative.
Perhaps there’s one outside the organization.
Within it, Kaapo Kahkonen is 4-2-0 with a .919 save percentage for the Laval Rocket this season, and he has 140 games of NHL experience.
The 29-year-old Finn is probably a better option than 20-year-old Jacob Fowler at this juncture, even if Fowler is 6-4-0, with a .921 save percentage in Laval.
The risk of potentially denting Fowler’s confidence at this critical point of his development probably outweighs the upside of him temporarily playing well.
But the Canadiens need someone to play well at the position right now.
Had either Montembeault or Dobes not played terribly Thursday, we wouldn’t have been hearing about immature plays and setbacks to October of 2024.
