MONTREAL — Connor Bedard got a lot of attention—much of it from Montreal Canadiens fans, and the rest of it from the Canadiens themselves, who kept him from spoiling their home opener at the Bell Centre.
This 18-year-old was billed as the main attraction, and with good reason. Bedard, who was chosen first overall by the Chicago Blackhawks back in June, emerged as the most hyped prospect since Connor McDavid and he came into Saturday’s game living up to that hype, with points in each of his first two NHL contests.
He left it under the spotlight that will surely continue to follow him everywhere he plays this season.
It was hot in this building, where Canadiens fans treated Bedard the same way they do every great player who leads the opposition.
He understood getting booed every time he touched the puck.
“I loved it,” he said afterwards.
What Bedard probably didn’t enjoy was how hard the Canadiens made it for him to do anything that would’ve silenced those boos on this night.
Granted, he had five shots on net, a game-high 12 attempts and he collected an assist on Tyler Johnson’s goal that pulled the Blackhawks within one goal with 1:21 to go.
But they lost this one 3-2, Bedard’s assist turned out to be a secondary one on a broken play, and his inability to produce a single high-danger scoring chance at five-on-five was largely due to the Canadiens neutralizing him.
They played like a team—not only in stifling Bedard and holding the rest of the Blackhawks to just two high-danger scoring chances at even strength but especially on the penalty kill, where they suffocated seven power play opportunities and scored a goal of their own.
In the dying seconds, with the Blackhawks holding a six-on-four advantage and Montreal’s Sean Monahan looking on helplessly from the penalty box, Canadiens assistant captain Mike Matheson blocked a blistering one-timer from Andreas Athanasiou and then captain Nick Suzuki followed that up by blocking an even more powerful one-timer from Seth Jones.
They were two of 20 blocked shots the Canadiens came up with—including three off Bedard’s stick—and they stung, no doubt.
“That’s what it takes,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis. “If you want to win, sometimes it’s going to hurt.”
And, for the Canadiens, it’s almost always going to require a full-team effort.
They have top-end players. Suzuki’s one of them. Matheson is one. Cole Caufield, who opened the scoring in Saturday’s game with a highlight-reel goal, is surely another. But they aren’t built around a superstar of Bedard’s ilk, and they know it.
“We understand what we have to do to be successful, and we did it. I thought we stuck together tonight,” said Josh Anderson, who had an assist on Caufield’s goal. “Everyone was engaged from the start.”
And when the Canadiens slipped a bit towards the end, goaltender Samuel Montembeault came up clutch.
“Unbelievable,” started Anderson in his evaluation of Montembeault’s performance. “When we needed him, he made some huge saves.”
None were better than the one he made with his glove on Bedard in the second period.
Canadiens defenceman David Savard beat Montembeault to one in the first, blocking a Bedard wrister with his hand while two of his teammates sat in the penalty box and the Blackhawks held a five-on-three advantage. He made four more blocks throughout the night, leaving Montembeault quipping, “I think Savy got as many saves as I did on the PK.”
That was good teamwork.
Monahan pulled back 14 of 16 faceoffs, Suzuki went six for eight from the dot, Jake Evans won 11 of 14, and even Alex Newhook finished with a 67 per-cent rating in the category. That, too, was good teamwork from the Canadiens, who lost second-line centre Kirby Dach to a lower-body injury late in the first period and could be deprived of his services for longer pending an evaluation Sunday.
From the wing, Tanner Pearson scored his first goal as a Canadien and Rafael Harvey-Pinard picked up his second assist in as many games, and Kaiden Guhle and Johnathan Kovacevic appeared to control the game on defence.
We can’t say any of them drew as much attention as Bedard did, but we’re sure all of them were just fine with that.
The Canadiens know what they have. They know they’ll need to add some more talent like his to eventually contend in this league.
But they’re building up habit through team play that will enable them to potentially win once they do procure more of that talent.
“To me, you can have the best players, but this game is played with five guys on the ice,” said St. Louis as training camp was wrapping up a week ago. “To me, the team game is always more important than the individual. But if you have really strong individual players who understand it’s a team game, you’re usually in a good spot.”
The Canadiens have collected three points through their first two games of the season because they seem to have a good grasp of that concept.
The Blackhawks have Bedard, but Saturday’s game provided more evidence—as did a tough loss earlier this week to the Boston Bruins—they have much further to come on the team-building front.
They’re off to Toronto now, and we’ll see if Bedard can do it mostly on his own against the Maple Leafs Monday.
The Canadiens will try to keep their thing going Tuesday, when the Minnesota Wild visit the Bell Centre.
