{"id":537897,"date":"2026-04-03T04:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T04:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537897\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T04:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T04:46:17","slug":"canadiens-coaching-themselves-reaching-new-stage-of-maturation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537897\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens coaching themselves, reaching new stage of maturation"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Martin St. Louis has been steering the Montreal Canadiens<\/a> towards this moment ever since he first stood behind their bench four years ago, and the things that happened both during and after Thursday\u2019s win over the New York Rangers provided more evidence they\u2019ve finally met it.<\/p>\n

A lot of the evidence that the Canadiens were prepared to coach themselves had already mounted. Much of it well before they rattled off six straight wins in regulation, including notching the first three of this five-game road trip before stepping on the ice at Madison Square Garden with bounce in their strides and chests puffed up.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year of improvement when it comes to self-correcting within games. And in between games, the Canadiens have put in the work on areas of concern to find ways to reverse season-long negative trends and develop the maturity the second-youngest team in the league would only naturally lack through the opening months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Thursday\u2019s 3-2 win over the young, carefree Rangers showed the Canadiens have also developed the mental alertness to make game-altering adjustments at the most pivotal moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And after they did that on what proved to be the winning goal, which came off Cole Caufield<\/a>\u2019s stick less than one minute removed from Will Cuylle tying the game for the Rangers, Nick Suzuki<\/a> said something that reinforced that the Canadiens don\u2019t need to rely exclusively on their coach to hold them to the standards they\u2019ve set for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really love our 60 minutes,\u201d Suzuki said. \u201cI think there was pockets where it was decent. We turned a lot of pucks over in the neutral zone and they got a lot of rushes off of those, so I think we can\u2019t be playing that way. I think we took it a bit too lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Louis didn\u2019t hear him say it, but it was music to his ears to be told that\u2019s how his captain assessed the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fine with that,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cI know that we have better than tonight. But overall, I felt like we put ourselves in a spot to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens were in control of this one right up to the point they weren\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They played a largely responsible opening 20 minutes, notched a lead on Alex Newhook\u2019s 12th\u00a0goal of the season 4:36 into the second period, and they built on that lead shortly after with a picturesque play Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky set for Cole Caufield to bury his 48th goal of the season. And though they did all the bad things Suzuki referenced through an eight-minute sequence that enabled the Rangers to bounce back with goals from Adam Fox and Cuylle, they still found a way to quickly rebound and lock this win up.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think it would\u2019ve (should\u2019ve) been easier against this Rangers team \u2014 which has been playing for better draft lottery position and nothing more while the Canadiens have been in playoff-mode for the last five weeks \u2014 but St. Louis knew it wouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re in your fourth game on the road, (and) the last five-six games have been like playoff-style games, tonight had a different feeling to this game,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t feel like our intentions were so off. We weren\u2019t as sharp in some spots, but at the end of the day I felt like we put ourselves in a pretty good spot to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the coach liked more, though, was that it wasn\u2019t good enough for the players.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you talk about standards, and Suzy\u2019s right,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cHe knows our standards are higher than that. But I felt like they were high enough to give ourselves a chance to win tonight. And I think as a coach, when you go through a season, where we\u2019ve gone lately, where we are in this road trip, I\u2019ve got to be careful in beating (up) the group if the standards are not there. But I\u2019m ok if the players stand up and talk about it. That\u2019s very reassuring for the coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened less than one minute after Cuylle scored, just seconds before Caufield scored his 49th\u00a0to get to within one of NHL leading scorer Nathan MacKinnon and ice the game, checked another box.<\/p>\n

Caufield, Suzuki, Slafkovsky, Noah Dobson and Mike Matheson huddled up to discuss their exit strategy for a defensive zone faceoff with 5:13 remaining in regulation. Then Suzuki popped into the circle to take it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The linesman pump-faked and didn\u2019t drop the puck, issuing a warning to Rangers centre J.T. Miller, and that\u2019s when the Canadiens players on the ice called an audible.<\/p>\n

Instructions flew around and Dobson, who was initially stationed on the boards to Suzuki\u2019s right, switched places with Matheson so that if Suzuki won the draw, Matheson would be on his forehand to rim the puck all the way around the boards to the weak side, where Caufield would already be pushing his way up the ice waiting for it to hit him in stride.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey noticed that I think the Rangers were lined up on one side of the ice for a one-timer setup,\u201d said St. Louis, \u201cand we took advantage of the weak (side of the) ice.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did no yelling from the bench. He just watched his players tap into the type of mental engagement that\u2019s become second nature to them to plan and execute the most important play of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about that,\u201d said St. Louis. \u201cWe have plenty of options of how we want to exit if we win faceoffs, but there\u2019s situations I feel you\u2019ve gotta notice things and you\u2019ve gotta take advantage of it, and it\u2019s stuff that we talk about, and I\u2019m glad that we took the initiative to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s where the Canadiens are at in their process.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been building towards this for so long, and now it\u2019s here \u2014 deep in a season that\u2019s already seen them collect 98 points.<\/p>\n

With seven games remaining, they\u2019re two points out of first in the Atlantic Division and four points out of first in the Eastern Conference, and they\u2019re giving their coach reasons to believe he has no reason to white-knuckle his grip on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n

On top of that, the stars who pressure themselves to make the difference night in, night out, are doing exactly that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slafkovsky\u2019s assist Thursday brought him to 67 points on the season, with 10 of them coming over this winning streak. Suzuki\u2019s two assists got him to 94 points, and they were two of the 10 assists he\u2019s had in the last seven games. Caufield has scored 12 of his 49 goals over his last 11 games, and now he\u2019s staring at a chance to notch his 50th\u00a0on his favourite night of the week.<\/p>\n

If Mr. Saturday Night doesn\u2019t deliver at Prudential Center, he\u2019ll get another crack at it on Sunday, when the Canadiens play the Devils in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Jacob Fowler, who stopped 22 of 24 shots against the Rangers, will likely be in net for that one at the Bell Centre after winning his fourth start of the five he\u2019s had since being recalled from Laval a couple weeks ago. Jakub Dobes, who\u2019s stopped 136 of the last 141 shots he\u2019s faced, will likely play on Saturday.<\/p>\n

St. Louis has to love what he\u2019s getting from both goaltenders.<\/p>\n

As he always says, he just lets them be, and they\u2019re making that easy for him.<\/p>\n

The coach isn\u2019t about to completely take a hands-off approach with the rest of the team, but Thursday\u2019s game should’ve only made him more confident that the Canadiens can take care of themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Martin St. Louis has been steering the Montreal Canadiens towards this moment ever since he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-537897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116338962117669946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}