Shellacked.
Pasted. Hammered. Crushed. Trounced. Pummeled. Clobbered.
Whipped like a rented mule.
Turned into a speed bump on the highway of life.
Get as creative as you please. When you get beaten by a converted touchdown on home ice in hockey, you’ve taken a butt-kicking.
What to do? After a week when your high-flying Canadiens were turned into mud-crawlers in 5-1 and 7-0 losses to the Los Angeles Kings and Dallas Stars, there’s widespread wailing and gnashing of teeth.
But what do you really do? File and forget, that’s what.
Just because an old saw is a cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true — and one of the oldest clichés is as true as they come: “You’re never as good as you look when you’re winning or as bad as you look when you’re losing.”
The Canadiens were never as good as the 10-3-2 team that took the ice against the Kings Tuesday night. And they aren’t nearly as bad as the team that is down 12-1 after two games heading into Saturday night’s tilt against their one-time bitter rivals, the Boston Bruins.
There was always going to be a levelling out somewhere along the way. You hope it wouldn’t be quite as savage as the double beating this young team endured this week, but perhaps it’s better to have the pratfall, break your nose, go for the ice bucket and get on with things.
Most of what mattered against the Stars happened in the span of about 20 seconds early in the second period. It started with Alexandre Carrier’s stick shattering in front of the net. As Kirby Dach tried to hand his stick to Carrier, he caught a shot on the ankle that dropped him to his knees in the corner.
With Dach down and Carrier trying to get back into the play, Esa Lindell scored to make it 2-0 Dallas, at a point when the Stars were getting outshot 14-6. Lindell seemed to find the whole sequence stupendously hilarious, but we would imagine Montreal was rather less amused.
Dallas Stars fan celebrates as Canadiens’ Jakub Dobes hangs his head after a goal by Wyatt Johnston during first period in Montreal on Thursday.
Compared with what happened next, however, that was the funny bit. Play had barely started again when Mike Matheson sent the puck in deep behind the Dallas net and Alex Newhook, one of the brightest stories for the Canadiens, shifted into Newhook speed and went after it.
As he pulled even with the net, Newhook was hauled down by Russian defenceman Ilya Lyubushkin. Newhook went barrelling into the boards right skate first and crumpled in pain. Lyubushkin got two minutes for hooking and Newhook got — as of this writing, we don’t know. Days, weeks, months.
It was a gut punch. Newhook’s improvement this season has matched the team’s trajectory. His speed fits perfectly with what Martin St. Louis is trying to do. He scores goals. He kills penalties. Whether he’s out a game or dozens of games, he’ll be hard to replace.
Other narratives from this week are more dubious. Jakub Dobes was not as bad as he’s made out to be, despite allowing five goals on 13 shots — the ice in front of him was a mess most of the night. A power-play goal, the fiasco with Dach down and out of a play, a goal after Lane Hutson hit a rut near the blue line and fell to one knee.
In hindsight, perhaps Martin St. Louis should have ridden the hot hand and stayed with Dobes when he was hot rather than sticking with Samuel Montembeault, but he had sound reasons for wanting to get his No. 1 goaltender going.
The larger myth has the Canadiens losing to two big, heavy western teams back-to-back — but the relative size of the combatants had nothing to do with the outcome. The Canadiens outhit the Stars 30-17 and outshot them 24-19. Experience meant more than size: Like the Kings, the Stars know how to shut you down once they grab a lead and they did just that, aided and abetted by a dozen bad bounces. The Canadiens even won the fights, as far as that goes.
Two nights earlier, the Habs outhit the Kings 21-10 in a contest that wasn’t particularly physical. Again, experience meant more than size. This may all change come the post-season, when the referees swallow their whistles and the game changes in a fundamental way — but the relative size advantage of these two big western teams had nothing to do with the outcome.
More than anything, what is in play here is learning to win. It’s what the Habs had to do as serious underdogs last season, when they battled back from the depths of December to make the playoffs. It’s what they’re being forced to do again this season when they aren’t going to catch anyone off guard. Don’t let this week fool you — this is a playoff team, with an outstanding coach.
There’s still a learning curve and you don’t get to skip any steps. Even blowouts have their role in the process. You’re cruising along feeling like the best thing since curved sticks when you catch a hip check you didn’t see coming and it leaves you flat on your back — and willing to learn.
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