MONTREAL — It was early on Monday, several hours before Ivan Demidov stormed into the world’s best league and immediately made his mark, that Kent Hughes was asked if the Montreal Canadiens were ahead of schedule in their rebuild.
With the Canadiens two points from the playoffs with two games remaining in their third full season under his watch, the general manager didn’t hesitate to respond: “Yes.”
“Our objective was to be in the mix, to play games that count in the month of March,” Hughes said, “and we’re now in April.”
Where the Canadiens found themselves on the morning of the 14th day of this final month of the NHL regular season was a step away from their biggest advancement in this process, and it was clear by night’s end, after they lost 4-3 in a shootout to the Chicago Blackhawks, that they weren’t prepared to take it.
Demidov was taking the biggest step of his life, and he proved more than ready for it. Not just because he possesses hair-raising, spine-tingling talent — which he put on display for nearly every second of his first 16:56 in the NHL — but also because he was the only Canadien playing with nothing to lose. This game was house money for him. It was being played just a week after his record-setting KHL season ended and his shocking contract release was negotiated, and he could just soak it all in and enjoy it, which he clearly did in manufacturing an assist off his very first puck touch before producing a goal on his first NHL shot.
As coach Martin St. Louis said earlier in the day, the 19-year-old Russian didn’t have to be a saviour — he just had to be himself. And as St. Louis noted after the game, he didn’t have to worry about the pressure of clinching a playoff berth because he was being dropped into this race an inch from the finish line, after having not taken a single step on the long, winding, hazardous road the Canadiens traveled to arrive to this final big step.
“I got some good stuff from the game,” Demidov said after hearing his name chanted in warmup, and after having his early presences in the game and his points celebrated by fans at full throat.
All the Canadiens got from the game was one point instead of two, and they were left with the sickly feeling of crumbling under the immense pressure of the moment.
“I feel the guys are going through a time as a young team here where you don’t get to practise these feelings of wanting something and you’re so close you can almost touch it,” said St. Louis. “The stress level goes up, for sure. And when you want something so bad and you’re working so hard, can you calm the mind through the storm? Can you calm the mind through the storm so you can make reads and execute? I feel it’s a little bit clouded right now with what’s at stake.”
There’s still sun peeking through.
The Canadiens just have to find a way to soak it up.
They didn’t do that against the freewheeling, loose and skilled Blackhawks Monday, who came into the game under no pressure at all and came out of it with some valuable experience for their own rebuild.
The Canadiens did that a year ago, in their final two games against a Detroit Red Wings clawing for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. They pushed that stressed-out Red Wings team to the brink, even if they lost both games in extra time, and that experience helped them make every game this season meaningful.
The skate was on the other foot Monday, and it buckled.
From up 2-0, Kaiden Guhle took a penalty 150 feet from Montreal’s net and the Blackhawks made him pay for it on the power play.
From up 2-1, the Canadiens extended an 0-for-13 run on their own power play to 0-for-16 and then surrendered two more goals because they couldn’t establish their forecheck and couldn’t supress Chicago’s dangerous counterattack.
They got a lucky bounce to tie the game 3-3 and break that power-play spell with 2:57 to go in regulation, but they couldn’t make their own luck in overtime or the shootout.
“We couldn’t get any momentum going,” said Brendan Gallagher. “Obviously the want, the desire’s there. Sometimes you just need to take a step back, do your job, and the rest will take care of itself.”
There’s a chance the Canadiens won’t need to do anything. If the Columbus Blue Jackets fail to beat the Philadelphia Flyers in regulation Tuesday, that’ll punch Montreal’s ticket to the playoffs.
But there’s also a chance the Canadiens will have to take care of this themselves by earning at least a point against the Carolina Hurricanes in the final game of the season Wednesday.
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You’d expect Demidov to be as good in that one as he was in Monday’s game. You’d hope the Canadiens will be much better than they were.
“I feel like we’ve got to try to get the guys to just trust the training and go play,” said St. Louis.
Maybe that becomes easier with the experience the Canadiens gained Monday.
Maybe the experience they’ve gained over the last 81 games pushes them further ahead of schedule.
“More than anything else, they have been resilient,” said Hughes. “If you look at our season, there have been a lot of ups and downs. They have not allowed the downs to drown them. They’ve continued to push back when their backs were up against the wall, and I think part of that is, it’s probably overdramatized to say it, I think there’s a family in that locker room. They’re playing for each other and not just for themselves.”
