MONTREAL — For the last 37 minutes of Thursday’s game, the Montreal Canadiens played as true to their identity as they have all season, knocking the Buffalo Sabres back on their heels and proving to be every bit as dangerous as their opponents expected them to be.
But a divergent opening 23 minutes cost them dearly and left their coach visibly frustrated at night’s end.
Was Martin St. Louis annoyed that the Canadiens finished up only two points instead of six on the Sabres in the Atlantic Division standings? Absolutely.
But he was justifiably more perturbed watching his team abandon a guiding principle of its style of play in a game of such relevance.
“The only department that we lacked in through the first period, and it hurt us, was our forecheck,” said St. Louis after the 4-2 loss. “We have a way of forechecking where we’re never supposed to have two guys heading towards one guy, and their defencemen were able to use each other and make us chase after the puck.”
Yes, the Sabres doing what they do best depends on six precise puck movers on their backend pouncing on any imbalance their opponents present, and the Canadiens gave them too many chances to do what they do best through those first 23 minutes.
This is about consistency, and the Canadiens are still chasing it.
The Sabres are a dominant counter-punching team. They came to Montreal with 16 wins in their last 20 games to show for it, and they left with a win because the Canadiens put them on their toes for too long before knocking them back on their heels.
Zach Benson’s goal at 2:25 of the second period gave Buffalo a 3-0 lead, and everything the Canadiens did after that showed to what extent they let a great opportunity slip from their fingers.
“If you let them skate with the skill they have, you’re going to be in trouble all night, and that was us from the second period onward,” said Sabres forward Jason Zucker. “They’re an incredible team. They have a ton of skill and make a ton of plays, and they play a brand where they force you to defend everyone everywhere.”
That is what’s put the Canadiens in the chase for first place in the Atlantic Division all season, with a dominant win over the Minnesota Wild this past Tuesday serving as the prototype of their brand and keeping them within striking distance of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Detroit Red Wings.
“They’re a little unique in the way that they play,” Wild coach John Hynes said that day.
That was before he watched the Canadiens forecheck in perfect balance and enable all six of their defencemen to activate in the offensive zone and wreak havoc on his team.
At one point, blueliner Alex Carrier moved into the slot to tip a shot for one of Montreal’s goals.
“If you see where the other four players were, he realized where he needed to go and went there at the right time,” said St. Louis about the play. “That’s what happens when you have balance on the ice.”
It is the thing St. Louis has focused most on establishing through his four years as Canadiens coach.
He, his assistants and director of development Adam Nicholas have harped on the Canadiens playing on top of their men in pursuit of the puck and in between checks with and without it, though St. Louis is always the first to point out it’s an age-old concept.
Long-time NHL coach Ken Hitchcock used to refer to it as having five guys in the picture in all three zones.
He was particularly insistent on that when play resumed following the 2005 lockout, when the rules changes and the skill and speed of the players were brought to the forefront.
But as Hitchcock pointed out when we spoke with him prior to Thursday’s game, you could only render that static picture dynamic with a lineup composition like the one the Canadiens currently have.
“Sometimes you had two out of your six defence who could really activate, but Montreal has five or six,” Hitchcock said. “You never thought of having a roster with six defencemen like this for most of the time I was coaching. You never thought about it all. So, what they’ve done, in some ways, has changed the game. When you have active defence like they do, it’s really hard to cover them, and you end up making a lot of mistakes because of that.”
The thing is, you can’t force those mistakes without first applying the right balance on the forecheck, and the Canadiens have struggled to do that at times this season.
It’s why they rank only 12th in the league in offensive-zone time at even strength, according to Sportlogiq.
But the Canadiens rank sixth in the league in offensive-zone possession time despite ranking 12th in offensive-zone time because once they do establish their forecheck, they’re very good at playing in balance.
It can be suffocating, like it was for the Wild — and like it should’ve been for the Sabres for more than just 37 minutes Thursday.
They had it easy through the first portion of the game.
With the Canadiens disconnected, the Sabres were afforded a ton of rush chances, starting with the one that enabled Zucker to score 44 seconds in.
Beck Malenstyn got a shorthanded one near the end of the first period to make it 2-0 Sabres, and it still took time in the second before the Canadiens rediscovered themselves and got to what they do best.
“What Montreal does so well is they control the puck in the offensive zone and don’t look for the immediate shot,” said Hitchcock. “They’re one of the best teams in the league at playing with mobility at the top of the zone, where two defencemen and the high forward work together to maintain puck control. They interchange with each other, they play in balance, and they keep doing it until you make a mistake they can jump on.”
The Canadiens forced many of them to hold the Sabres to zero shots on net from the fifth minute of the second period through the fifth minute of the third. They scored two goals by regularly applying the balance that makes them so dangerous.
That the Canadiens didn’t have it to start was regrettable, costly, and something they need to learn from before playing the Boston Bruins Saturday.
