TORONTO — It was a simple, straightforward question to Martin St. Louis after his Montreal Canadiens lost for the sixth straight time.
“Was the level of emotion where it needed to be tonight?” asked Radio Canada’s Alexandre Gascon after the Canadiens lost 4-1 on Saturday to a Toronto Maple Leafs team that had played the night before and was missing its best player in Auston Matthews before losing forward Max Pacioretty to a lower-body injury with over 42 minutes to play.
St. Louis paused for a full 10 seconds before saying, “I don’t know.”
“I think we’re a fragile team that’s missing confidence right now,” he continued. “I talked before the game about our intentions being good and I felt we were ready, and even in the first period we had five chances to score from the slot and missed the net. And they take one shot and hit our player in the back and score.”
What happened after Conor Timmins banked one off Christian Dvorak to put the Leafs up 1-0 was troubling.
The Canadiens couldn’t find a way to push back. Not only that; they ended up pulling themselves out of the game.
Was the level of emotion where it needed to be? No.
Simple answer.
A lot of players need to look themselves in the mirror to bring the emotion back up to where it belongs. Pretty much all of Montreal’s best players need to do that.
Not only were they not their best players in this game; they were their worst.
“They’re all fighting it a bit,” said St. Louis, who referenced their dipping confidence several times over the course of his six-minute post-game scrum.
When he re-watches the game — which he said he intends to do — he’s going to see it’s more than just confidence.
Captain Nick Suzuki is making uncharacteristic mistakes all over the ice. He led the Canadiens with three giveaways in this game, and he cost them the short-handed goal that Mitch Marner scored to make it 3-0 Leafs in the ninth minute of the second period.
Suzuki got stuck watching the puck, let Marner separate from him in front of the net, and that’s all it took to end up on the losing end of the play.
That is the stuff this 4-9-2 start to the season for the Canadiens has been made of.
“It’s frustrating,” said Kirby Dach. “It sucks losing these games right now. Every guy in here hates to lose. We want to go out there and win these games right now and it just feels like we’re letting little moments slip away and then we’re getting ourselves behind the 8-ball. It’s frustrating, but we’ve got to embrace it and grind our way out as a team. The only way to get out of it is through it.”
That requires taking the work ethic and emotion way up from where it is, like Dach somewhat did in the third period after not finding a way to do it through the first two.
Too little, too late, and the result was the same — zero points. Just like in every other game in this losing streak for Dach, who is expectedly off to a rough start after missing all but two games last season with torn ligaments in his right knee.
“I go back and watch games and look at how I’m playing, and how I feel and the result of it all, and I knew it was going to be a grace period of getting the timing and spacing of it all,” he said. “But it’s definitely on my mind that I want to be able to be better for the team.”
It isn’t just going to come, though. Dach has to go get it.
So does Juraj Slafkovsky, who’s not moving his feet enough to make the plays he’s capable of making. So does Cole Caufield, who like Suzuki, isn’t pushing hard enough and hasn’t put up a point in his last four games.
They all must ask themselves if they’re really doing what it takes to flip the result.
“I feel like I’m trying to work myself out of it,” said Suzuki. “I got a couple of good looks tonight but just wasn’t able to capitalize. I expect a lot out of myself, and it hasn’t been fun lately. I’m just trying to play the best I can to help the team. My job is to produce, so I’m not doing my job right now.”
Suzuki’s job is to do more than just produce, though, and he’s not going to do it well enough if he doesn’t give more than he did on Saturday.
Brendan Gallagher, who scored Montreal’s only goal and his seventh of the season, was applying himself the way you’re supposed to when the team desperately needs a win. That’s what he’s done since Game 1.
Jake Evans is right there with him. So is Alex Newhook. So is Emil Heineman, and even Josh Anderson, who made a mistake on Timmins’s goal but did everything he could to make up for it.
The Canadiens need more from the rest of their forwards — especially on the emotional side of it.
If St. Louis hesitated to say it, he probably didn’t want to damage their confidence further.
But St. Louis shouldn’t have to say it for the Canadiens to know it.
They better face the truth and change it, or it’s going to be a seventh straight loss in Buffalo on Monday.
