MONTREAL — At one end of the ice, Juraj Slafkovsky finished a play he started, with magical touches in between from Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov. At the other, Kaiden Guhle and Arber Xhekaj got crossed up in front of rookie goaltender Jakub Dobes, leaving Andrew Mangiapane the opening to score the goal that ultimately sent the Capitals back to Washington with a chance to eliminate the Canadiens from the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
This was the double-edged sword of youth and inexperience, helping and hurting the Canadiens all at once.
The veteran Capitals took advantage of it and wielded their dagger expertly to win 5-2 and take a commanding 3-1 series lead back to Capital One Arena.
Granted, any player(s) could’ve made the mistake that broke Mangiapane free.
It just so happened to be Guhle (playing his fourth-ever playoff game) and Xhekaj (playing his second), on the ice together because veteran Alex Carrier was in the Canadiens’ dressing room trying to recover from the hit Tom Wilson landed on him right before Brandon Duhaime banked a puck off Cole Caufield to tie the game 2-2 in the seventh minute of the third period.
Think back to why Carrier was acquired from the Nashville Predators on Dec. 18. The Canadiens traded 23-year-old Justin Barron for the 28-year-old to stabilize Montreal’s blue line, to add some much-needed experience and a right-handed player to a core full of young lefties.
It certainly puts his absence from the final portion of Game 4 in perspective.
“He’s a warrior,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis from the Bell Centre press room afterwards. “He’s consistent. You know exactly what you’re going to get from him.”
Guhle had called Carrier Montreal’s best defenceman through the first three games of the series.
Without him, the Canadiens were overextended. Having already leaned heavily on veterans Mike Matheson and David Savard on the penalty kill in the second period, Guhle was left to take some shifts with Xhekaj down the stretch of the third just to keep everyone fresh.
They got out there together for just the sixth time in the game, this time on the fly, and both players got caught on the right side of the ice after playing the left on their respective pairings through the rest of the night.
Communication breakdown. Could’ve happened to anyone.
But it happened to two kids that weren’t likely to find themselves on the ice together for any other reason than Carrier going down.
Still, youth and inexperience have also been driving forces for the Canadiens this season.
Their naivety played to their advantage, if not right at the start — when assistant coach Stephane Robidas rallied the team at its first morning skate and asked, “Why not us? Why not now?” — then from the middle of November onward, with them shocking the hockey world by climbing from last place to eighth in the Eastern Conference and clinching a playoff berth in the 82nd game because players like Slafkovsky, Hutson and Demidov defied their age in the biggest moments.
Yes, 24-year-old Caufield and 25-year-old Nick Suzuki played huge roles along the way. So did veterans Jake Evans, Brendan Gallagher, Josh Anderson and Christian Dvorak.
But watching the three youngest players on the Canadiens combine for the power-play goal that tied the game 1-1 in the 11th minute of the second period was the stuff this Canadiens season has been made of.
The momentum swung heavily Montreal’s way right before that — with Matheson, Savard and Evans killing a 5-on-3 Capitals advantage — and it carried the Canadiens to their next goal, which Hutson and Demidov set for Caufield with 1:28 to play in the second period.
The Capitals went to their room down 2-1, feeling dejected after 40 minutes.
But not defeated.
“We’ve been in these scenarios where we’ve needed to dig in and find a way,” said coach Spencer Carbery, who reminded us that his team had a league-leading 25 comeback wins this season. “Sometimes again, it doesn’t always work out, but sometimes our group just needs to be reminded of who we are, what we’ve battled through, and the capability that we have, even though [expletive]hits the fan. And that’s what happened in the second period. It was a mess. We don’t score on the five-on-three, we’ve got things going on everywhere, the building is erupting, you’re gonna deal with that. If you’re gonna win a playoff series, you’re gonna have to overcome adversity, and that was a prime example tonight of us being able to do that.”
Having 39-year-old Stanley Cup winner Alex Ovechkin lead the eighth-oldest team in the NHL helps.
Sunday’s game was the 27-year-old Duhaime’s 27th in the playoffs. It was Mangiapane’s 31st.
Wilson, who turned the game, was playing his 91st.
“It was a big hit,” he said, “and the boys were able to score right after.”
“That’s kind of the way hockey goes,” Wilson added.
He knows.
Suzuki, who was playing his 36th playoff game, knows too.
He has experienced the wild emotional swings, taken and given the hits that create them, and he’s seen more than most players his age in this league. He’s even come within three wins of lifting the Cup.
“I’ve been down 3-1 before,” the Canadiens’ captain said, after acknowledging all of this is so new to many of the players sharing the room he was speaking from.
Dobes had played a little over a period of playoff hockey before Sunday’s game. He had just 16 NHL appearances in the regular season before being unexpectedly dropped into this series because Canadiens starter Samuel Montembeault got injured. He made post-to-post saves on Wilson and 35-year-old Cup winner John Carlson and, in between, allowed a goal he shouldn’t have to Dylan Strome, who’s played 535 games (regular season and post-season combined) in this league.
Afterwards, Dobes couldn’t hold back from expressing just how caught up he was in the drama that unfolded in front of him — with Ovechkin trucking Evans over for the power play that led to Caufield’s goal and Wilson knocking Carrier out of the game and virtually into another dimension.
“I’m a rookie in this league,” Dobes said. “I should have respect, but it’s hard. I want to say a lot of things, but I should stay quiet.”
He did not stay quiet, calling for Ovechkin to get suspended—and for a whistle on the play that left Carrier wobbling.
“You don’t want to see one of our better players skating around the ice concussed,” Dobes said, and he wasn’t done talking.
The 49-year-old coach of the Canadiens wasn’t at a loss for words, either. He just minced them much more than his 23-year-old goaltender chose to.
“It’s tough for me to explain how I really feel,” said St. Louis.
He’ll have to find the right thing to say to his young team ahead of Game 5 in Washington on Wednesday.
“We’ll digest this loss here,” St. Louis concluded. “We got a goal scored on us with three or four minutes to go, it was an intense game. It’s hard to explain how proud I am of our group for still being in the fight. We know we have to win at least one game over there, so we’re going to try to do that, and we’ll continue to stretch this series. We have a very, very confident group, and we’ll continue.”
Likely without Montembeault, and perhaps without Carrier.
But Slafkovsky, Hutson, Demidov and the kids can still do a lot with one edge of that sword.
