PHILADELPHIA — Arber Xhekaj and David Savard got twisted around behind their own net before Olle Lycksell pounced on a loose puck to gift Nicolas Deslauriers his first goal of the season.
When Sean Couturier scored just over a minute later to put the Philadelphia Flyers up 3-1, it was the fifth five-on-five goal scored against Xhekaj and Savard since the Montreal Canadiens put themselves in a playoff spot with a 6-3 win over the Ottawa Senators last Tuesday.
Why they were on the ice immediately after Couturier’s goal was a mystery on its own, but how they attempted to defend the play was even more perplexing.
And it’s not because both of them found themselves above the dots in their own zone as the puck was bouncing off Couturier in front of goaltender Jakub Dobes. It was because neither of them closed the gap on the players they were covering with the urgency required, and we know that’s the only thing they were trying to do on a play like this.
These are two hard-working players who always have good intentions. Both want to make those plays more than anyone to help the Canadiens tighten their grip on a playoff spot.
But both failing to do so with regularity has been emblematic of what we’ve seen from the Canadiens as a whole under these late-season circumstances.
On Thursday, their discomfort with being in the second wild-card position — where they hadn’t previously been for more than a day here or there since the rebuild began three years ago — once again led to poor execution. For a fourth straight game, it led to a loss. And it was a third straight loss featuring a terrible start and the type of mental mistakes a team in their position shouldn’t make.
The Canadiens shouldn’t have lost 6-4 to a Flyers team that had done nothing but lose in the lead up to the game.
Montreal lost to a Philadelphia team it knew would come out hard based on all the losing of late and head coach John Tortorella being fired earlier in the day. They lost to a Flyers team that played the whole game with defenceman Cam York stapled to the bench as a disciplinary measure.
But with the way the Canadiens played, they’d have lost to anyone.
They’ve been trapped in a pattern of focusing too much on the results they need instead of the process that will get them the results they need, and will continue to lose if they don’t change that.
What the Canadiens need is a change in perspective.
“To me it’s a little bit of pressure versus pleasure,” said Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis after the game. “Gotta have fun with these 11 games we have left. We’ve got to be direct and have good intentions, but we’ve got to have fun with this process. Everybody’s disappointed. You come out of this game — it doesn’t seem like fun. But if you take a snapshot of where we are right now, it should still be fun. We’ve just got to remind them of that.”
That feels imperative, considering how tight the Canadiens appear to be holding their sticks and how much they appear to be doubting themselves right now.
“I think the guys are a bit in their head right now,” said captain Nick Suzuki. “We’re not being as assertive as we were. There’s a lot of second-guessing, and we’re an aggressive team, and if we get caught in between it gets exposed, and you saw that a bunch tonight.”
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We’ve seen it a bunch since the Canadiens rattled off all those wins to climb into a playoff position on Mar. 18, and it hasn’t just been from Xhekaj and Savard.
It wasn’t just them on Thursday, either.
Mike Matheson had unforgivable turnovers that gave the Flyers some of their best chances. Lane Hutson and Jayden Struble got crossed up on the goal Tyson Foerster scored to make it 4-2 Flyers halfway through the third period. And Joel Armia had a chance to tie the puck up behind Philadelphia’s net while Montreal was deep into a penalty kill and instead threw it right back into the slot to give Couturier the rush that led to a backbreaking 5-2 goal.
With late goals from Christian Dvorak and Patrik Laine, the game could’ve been tied 4-4.
But every good action appeared to be followed by two bad ones from the Canadiens.
“We were nowhere near at our best tonight, so we deserved what we got,” said Josh Anderson.
It’s not as simple as wanting or needing to be better in Carolina on Friday to get something different.
The Canadiens must settle themselves and find the focus required to play the way they did to put themselves in this position to begin with.
As St. Louis noted, that comes with a big-picture adjustment.
“Having perspective can bring you back to Earth,” he said. “A month ago, we’d have paid a lot to be in the position we’re in.”
To maintain, it requires a small-picture recalibration as well.
“You look at the last few games and it’s aggravating,” said St. Louis, “but we have a good team here and we have to just tighten things up and get back to work.”
The Canadiens must do that right from the start of Friday’s game in Raleigh, and they know it.
They may still be the fifth-youngest team in the league, but they’re not too young to adjust.
“I think we’ve grown enough as a team to learn the position that we’re in, the scenario that we have,” said Anderson. “Obviously, we’re trying to build something here and we have a great opportunity to do that and we’re not taking advantage, to be honest. It’s a new day tomorrow. Thank God we’ve got a game tomorrow to fix things, and we have to be ready.”
Kaiden Guhle could be ready to help for the first time since undergoing surgery to repair a torn quadricep muscle on Jan. 29.
If he is, he’ll be a better option for defence coach Stephane Robidas to roll on to the ice in any situation.
But Guhle won’t make the difference on his own.
“We need everybody,” said St. Louis. “Everybody’s been a big part of our success, and we need everybody to keep going.”
