ANAHEIM, Calif. — Go back 11 months, to when the Canadiens went through their roughest patch under Martin St. Louis, to when they were losing player after player to injury and losing game after game in a manner that had general manager Kent Hughes questioning whether or not the environment was conducive to anyone properly developing.
Now think of how St. Louis emerged from that crisis, saying he was determined to not again allow elements of the team’s play to slip to a point where corrections weren’t immediately implemented.
He took a major lesson from that humbling experience, and he’s currently applying what he learned in trying to get the Canadiens out of their four-game losing streak.
It started at practice Monday, before St. Louis and the Canadiens boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles and drove to Anaheim, and it continued on Tuesday.
“I don’t wait,” St. Louis said.
He repeated those same words and added, “I see the most important thing and, for me, the Boston game (a 5-2 loss to the Bruins on Saturday) — it was our forecheck. That’s it. The rest would’ve been fine if we just forechecked like we know how. And somehow it slipped.
“Is it the other team? Yeah, probably a little bit. But it’s still a lot of our actions where we created the kind of result that we got. And it started so far away from the puck; it started on our forecheck.
“In this league, when you forecheck space, it’s really hard to steal the puck. You’ve got to forecheck people.”
Watching practice at Honda Center Tuesday, you could see whatever was gone over in extensive video work being applied and reinforced on the ice. As St. Louis said afterwards, you have to account for people learning in different ways, so video work, illustrating concepts on the white boards and then walking through them in practice was a way to break through to everyone.
St. Louis was meticulous — and not just in working through the forecheck drills, but also in touching on the minutia of how to efficiently change lines. He was thorough, saying afterwards, “I don’t know if the players appreciated it, but it’s important. It’s not necessarily fun stuff, but it’s stuff you have to do like you love it.”
But it wasn’t the stuff that dominated Monday or Tuesday’s practice.
St. Louis narrowed his focus, and that has a lot to do with what he learned in coaching the team through a longer period of turmoil than he felt it should be experiencing 11 months ago.
“We looked at a lot of examples of why we chased the game in Boston and that’s the one part of our game that we’ve got to get back now,” St. Louis said about the forecheck. “Now, (and) not let it slip for three, four games. It’s the one topic that we really talked about.
“Can we play better in the D-zone? Yeah. Can we play better in the neutral zone? Yeah. Every team has parts of their game that you can do better.
“But if you try to improve everything at once, it’s going to be hard, it’s too many things. We just felt the forecheck is everything to our game.”
It’s part of the reason Brendan Gallagher is moving to the first line with Nick Suzuki
There might not be a better forechecker on the Canadiens than Gallagher. He rarely just attacks space, he always attacks players, and Suzuki and Alex Newhook might really benefit from having him next to them.
One of the reasons it might work, though, is because Gallagher’s game has evolved enough for forechecking and net-front presence to not be the only things he brings to a line.
“I feel he’s more efficient on the ice, has more purpose on the ice by just playing the game and not just, ‘I’m F1, I’m net-front,’” said St. Louis. “There’s times where that’s going to happen (where he is F1 and net-front), but when it’s not your turn, what do you do? Are you part of the equation to help the group on the ice, or you just want to be in this spot and do this thing? We know he’s very, very good at that, but I’ve been really happy with his game and how engaged he is and how he’s evolving, and I think in this league you have to evolve if you want to be efficient on the ice, and I think he’s doing that.”
Watch Gallagher make plays coming out of his own end, watch him make creative passes he didn’t do before in the neutral zone, watch him find the dead areas of the offensive zone when a linemate is ahead of him on the forecheck, watch him get pucks turned over by making a good read as the second forechecker. He’s doing all of that.
And because Gallagher is — and certainly because he’s healthy for the first time in a long time — it appears as though he’s accessing those elements that have always been fundamental to his game (the forechecking and the net-front presence) far more frequently than he did over the first season-and-a-half under St. Louis.
“A lot of that is learning and experiencing it and (needing) time to understand it,” said Gallagher. “It’s becoming more and more natural for me; it’s not something I think about all that much. It’s just a part of my game, and you add some stuff. It took some time. There (were) games early on where I felt like I was thinking about it too much, and that’s just part of the learning experience. But I feel like now I’m in a place where it’s really benefitted me and helped my game. I’m in a place where you’ve added something and you’re much more effective as a player, so I’ve enjoyed it. It’s something that, as a player, not a lot of the guys get at my age, and I’ve really tried to take advantage of it the best that I can.”
I wondered at times if the 31-year-old felt he was losing his identity as a player a bit in trying to implement all the changes his coach was asking of him, but it seems clear now that he was just processing things and practising them so they could become second nature.
“You don’t want to get away from what got you here and what’s given you success in the past,” Gallagher said, “but it’s just a matter of adding to it without losing the player that you are. So, I understand who I am and why I’ve been in the league for a long time, but you can add stuff to become tougher to play against. And that’s always the goal.”
What’s also clear is that Gallagher has responded well to St. Louis’ approach with him.
“I’ve really appreciated getting the chance to play for Marty,” he said — and it was unprompted. “Not a lot of players think like him when they’re a player, and to be able to play for a guy like that as a coach — I think it just opens your mind up to so many different possibilities.”
Gallagher’s open mindedness has enabled positive change in his game, and it’s bumping him up the lineup for Wednesday’s game against the Ducks.
Goaltending carousel keeps turning
This monster is going to continue to have three heads for the time being and, despite trade rumours swirling, it could be like that for a while longer.
I tried — and mostly failed — to find a creative way to ask Jake Allen about how he’s managing it, but Allen still delivered the type of insight that’s made him so appreciated by media in Montreal.
“I think once you came to the realization it was going to happen towards the end of camp and throughout the year — internally, we knew it wasn’t going to be a short-term thing — you’ve just got to accept it for what it is and embrace it,” Allen said. “I thought Cayden (Primeau) had a great training camp, Sam (Montembeault) has obviously proven himself to be an elite goalie in this league, so you have to just have a good way of looking at it. If you’re to handle it in any other way, you’re just going to hinder yourself. Have to be light about it.
“But I also think it’s benefited us. As a goaltending unit, we’ve played pretty solid so far this year. You find ways to pull efficiency out of it. We have extra time to practice, one guy gets a breather and a night off, you get to mentally refresh. It’s something new for all of us, but you have to go about it the right way.”
One way is not getting distracted by rumours, which is easier said than done.
Right now, Allen, Montembeault and Primeau have all been mentioned in some, and all three of them know a trade is how the carousel eventually comes to a stop.
“You have to be a realist about the whole situation—there’s three people and two positions,” Allen said. “I still think we’ve worked really well as a group. And we’re not the only team in the league doing this. I know at least three or four other teams are doing it. And there’s a reason for it — there’s waivers, and there’s also the injury factor.
“The position has changed so much over the years, and you need three guys and have to have at least that many who can play at this level, and we’re very fortunate that we do.”
He said he wants to stay in Montreal.
Allen also has a seven-team no-trade clause, which could keep him there if push comes to shove, though I didn’t ask him about that.
Montembeault, who’s in the final season of his contract and staring down the possibility of becoming an unrestricted free agent next summer, has made it clear he wants to stay as well. He confirmed he’s engaged in contract negotiations with the Canadiens, and we’ll see where that ends up.
It should be no surprise that he’d be the most coveted of the three Montreal goaltenders, though.
“I think he’s day-in, day-out consistently,” said Allen. “He’s the same on the ice, same in here, same at practice, and I think that brings him success. I think that’s his recipe. Demeanour, style of play, technical play—his game doesn’t alter whether he has a good game or a bad game. He’s always there. I’ve been very impressed, going back to the beginning of last year, with how consistent he’s been. You’re not going to have good games all the time, and you’re going to have bad games, but the majority of his games he’s been so consistent and reliable, and that’s the most important thing you can be in this league as a goalie. Especially from a longevity standpoint.
“And I’ve been really impressed with him, especially with how he’s handled it in being a Quebecker…”
It certainly speaks to how Montembeault handles pressure.
Perhaps that’s part of why a team like the Edmonton Oilers would have interest in him, because they can’t afford to have a goaltender who doesn’t handle it well and right now it’s suffocating.
As Elliotte Friedman reported, the Oilers have looked at all of Montreal’s goaltenders.
But the Canadiens aren’t going to give any of them up without demanding a high price, and they’re all going to remain in place until a team is willing to pay it.
