The Canadiens’ Jayden Struble and Arber Xhekaj were talking Friday afternoon about how they had to do something to fire up their teammates Saturday night against the Boston Bruins at the Bell Centre after losing their last two games at home while being outscored 12-1.
Struble decided before the game started he would ask Bruins defenceman Nikita Zadorov to fight him. Struble is 6-foot and 207 pounds. Zadorov is 6-foot-7 and 255 pounds.
There’s a reason why there are weight divisions in boxing and UFC.
“He’s a big boy,” Struble said. “I thought I’d get the guys going. So I just asked him after the anthem and he said yes. So that was it, really.”
Struble and Zadorov dropped the gloves four seconds after the puck dropped and the Canadiens defenceman did OK despite the big size difference.
“I thought I was going to get everyone going,” Struble said. “They see you go after a big guy and Boston, too, Saturday night. It would have been nice to win and play up to our standard.”
The Canadiens didn’t win — losing 3-2 to the Bruins, who moved ahead of them into first place in the Atlantic Division. The Bruins have a 12-8-0 record and are now two points ahead of the Canadiens (10-6-2) and the Ottawa Senators (9-6-4), who lost 1-0 to the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday.
Xhekaj dropped the gloves with the Bruins’ Tanner Jeannot 3:52 into the game and lost that fight, getting dropped with a solid right hand.
But the fights weren’t the story of this game. The Canadiens’ power play was, going 0-for-7, including two lengthy 5-on-3 advantages. The Canadiens are now 0-for-17 on the power play over the last five games.
Instead of dropping the gloves against the Bruins, Struble and Xhekaj should have yelled “shoot the f—en puck!” at their teammates on the power play.
Marat Khusnutdinov opened the scoring for the Bruins at 8:38 of the first period and Jake Evans tied it up for the Canadiens with a short-handed goal less than four minutes later. Before the first period ended, the Canadiens had a 5-on-3 power play for 1:28 and failed to get a shot on goal.
The Canadiens were trailing 2-1 after Mason Lohrei scored at 2:00 of the second period. Less than eight minutes into the period, the Canadiens had another 5-on-3 power play for 1:50. This time, they got three shots on goal.
To rub salt in the wound, the Bruins went up 3-1 when Viktor Arvidsson scored a power-play goal at 16:51 of the third period. Cole Caufield cut the Bruins’ lead to 3-2 at 18:44 of the third period with his team-leading 13th goal of the season.
The Canadiens got another power-play opportunity at 4:23 of the third period, but managed to get only one shot on goal.
On the seven power plays, the Canadiens had six shots on goal and eight missed shots. They also had what seemed like 500 passes.
Frustrated fans at the Bell Centre kept yelling “shoot!”
Did the Canadiens hear them?
“Not really,” said defenceman Lane Hutson, who had 7:20 of ice time on the power play. “But I guess sometimes we should listen a little bit.
“It’s a problem when our penalty kill scores more than our power play,” Hutson added. “We just need to be better and we need it quick.”
The Canadiens have a practice scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Sunday in Brossard before flying to Columbus to face the Blue Jackets on Monday (7 p.m., Prime, RDS). That entire practice should be devoted to the power play.
It looks like there’s simply too much passing and not enough shooting or traffic in front of the net.
“We’ll take a look,” Martin St. Louis said in his post-game news conference when I asked him if that is, indeed, the problem.
Rookie Ivan Demidov had 18:52 of ice time, including 7:52 on the power play, and finished the game without a shot on goal. The Canadiens are averaging 24.8 shots per game, which ranks 29th in the NHL.
When I asked Hutson if it’s a case of looking for the perfect play on the power play instead of shooting, he said: “That’s part of it. I think we got some great passers, but also got great finishers on our unit. Some guys got to be a little more selfish, myself included. It’s something to learn from and I never want this to happen again.”
I asked the same question to Caufield, who had 7:24 of ice time on the power play.
“Maybe,” Caufield said. “I think shots are the most important thing and we didn’t really get many and when we did we didn’t really hit the net. It’s disappointing for us and we expect a lot better from ourselves.
“Just lack of execution, lack of detail,” Caufield added. “We got to be better. It’s on us. Every touch should be clean. You watch other power plays and they look pretty good. It’s something that we definitely got to put some time in and put some work in because it kind of cost us the game tonight. We had two five-on-threes. Got to find a way to get one (goal), but you should get two on those. We got to be a lot better.”
Yep.
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