Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis didn’t like the way his team started last Tuesday night’s game at the Bell Centre against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Hurricanes outshot the Canadiens 16-4 in the first period, but were only leading 2-1 thanks to goalie Jakub Dobes.
After the game — which the Canadiens won 5-2 with Dobes making 41 saves — I asked St. Louis if he said something to his players in the locker room after the first period.
“Yeah, I sure did,” he said without expanding on the answer.
But what St. Louis heard the players saying on the bench during that first period and for the rest of the game was more important than what he said during the first intermission.
Four years into a rebuilding plan, the Canadiens players fully understand what St. Louis expects from them and are usually able to correct themselves, not afraid to call each other out on the bench.
The Canadiens took a season-high five-game winning streak into Tuesday’s game against the Lightning in Tampa (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS) and were in third place in the Atlantic Division with a 42-21-10 record and 94 points, four points behind the Lightning (46-21-6) and the Buffalo Sabres (45-21-8). The Canadiens were 17 points ahead of their pace from last season when they had a 34-30-9 record after 73 games and ended up making the playoffs for the first time in four years, earning the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with a 40-31-11 record for 91 points.
The Canadiens’ odds of making the playoffs for a second straight year were 99.7 per cent, according to the Hockey-Reference website, before facing the Lightning. The Canadiens ranked sixth in the overall NHL standings and had a 20-8-8 road record.
“You can hear the bench talk,” St. Louis said after the Canadiens came back to beat the Hurricanes last Tuesday. “Obviously, I’m talking, too. It’s not just me. You can hear the players talk — how it’s not good enough and let’s do more of that or more of this.
“You try to get it back one shift at a time, one action at a time,” St. Louis added. “I feel like we’ve been able to do that, and sometimes you just need the period to end, and hopefully you didn’t get hurt too much. That was a big goal that (Oliver Kapanen) scored (before the first period ended). And then you can kind of come up for air, talk a little bit and get back at it. I think that’s what we did.”
The Canadiens did it again Sunday in Carolina when they beat the Hurricanes 3-1 after being outshot 13-6 in the first period. It was a franchise-record 25th comeback win. The Canadiens had 24 comeback wins in 1975-76 and 1992-93 and ended both those seasons by hoisting the Stanley Cup.
Before facing the Lightning, the Canadiens had a 14-4-3 record in their last 21 games while getting some outstanding goaltending from Dobes and Jacob Fowler. In his last 20 games, dating to Dec. 14, Dobes had a 15-3-2 record with a 2.48 GAA and a .911 save percentage.
Getting that kind of goaltending has boosted the Canadiens’ confidence that they can come back in games — even when they start very slowly.
Heading into Tuesday’s games, the Canadiens ranked third in the NHL in offence, scoring an average of 3.51 goals per game. With 26-65-91 totals, captain Nick Suzuki ranked eighth in NHL scoring and is the first Canadien to hit 90 points since Pierre Turgeon had 96 and Vincent Damphousse had 94 in 1995-96. Cole Caufield had scored 25 goals in his last 25 games and with 46 goals has a chance to become the Canadiens’ first 50-goal scorer since Stéphane Richer scored 51 in 1989-90. Lane Hutson had 62 assists and needed five more in the last nine games to break Larry Robinson’s franchise record for most assists by a defenceman in a season. The Hall of Fame rearguard had 66 assists in 1976-77. Juraj Slafkovsky celebrated his 22nd birthday on Monday and ranks second all-time in franchise history for points (including playoffs) before turning 22 with 177, two behind Hall of Famer Henri Richard.
The future is looking very bright for the Canadiens.
“I think we trust the brand that we want to play,” veteran defenceman Mike Matheson said. “We trust that once we do find that brand, we’ll have success. So it’s not really about, ‘Will it work?’ We know that we just need to find it, and then things will start clicking.
“It’s definitely important,” Matheson added about the players’ ability to coach themselves. “I feel like it’s kind of a big story right now, but it’s been something we’ve been doing all year long.”
When things are clicking, St. Louis can just watch from behind the bench as the players execute the system he has spent four years building.
“As a coach, you always try to steer them,” he said. “If it’s quiet (on the bench) sometimes you have to lead. But I feel like there’s times when you don’t have to lead as a coach. The team is leading itself.”
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