1. Home
  3. Sport

Canadiens use plays that don't show up on scoresheet to show their growth

19 November 2024Last Update :
Canadiens use plays that don't show up on scoresheet to show their growth

MONTREAL — Kaiden Guhle was in the dressing room at the time, wondering how his Montreal Canadiens teammates were doing without him.

His assignment Monday was clear. He and his defence partner, Mike Matheson, would be hard-matched with Connor McDavid, arguably the best player in the world. Whenever the Edmonton Oilers would send McDavid on the ice, Guhle and Matheson would jump on as well. That was the plan, at least.

And then, less than nine minutes into the game, Guhle got in the way of an Evan Bouchard blast while killing a penalty. The shot hit him in the right hand, and Guhle went straight to the Canadiens dressing room to get his hand checked out. He thought it might be broken.

The Canadiens had come out a bit flat. They were taking penalties, something they said they absolutely could not do against a potent Oilers power play. They were turning pucks over. It wasn’t pretty.

And thus, Guhle was waiting for the X-rays to show his right hand was not broken and wondering how his team was doing without him. When his teammates came back in the room tied at 0 after the first period, they filled him in on what had happened.

“They said after Arber’s (Xhekaj) hit against (Zach) Hyman, it kind of riled up the group, got the crowd into it a little bit,” Guhle said. “I think after that hit we kind of turned it around a bit.”

Guhle came back to start the second period and, despite missing half the first period, finished the game with more than 11 minutes of five-on-five ice time against McDavid, according to Natural Stat Trick. The Canadiens generally defended in those minutes — shot attempts were 10-7 Oilers — but they outscored Edmonton 1-0 in those minutes, and that goal came from Guhle himself, a goal that extended the Canadiens’ lead to 2-0 with a little more than 14 minutes to play.

But after the game, it was Guhle posing with Xhekaj in the Canadiens’ player-of-the-game Polaroid. Guhle was a big factor, but Xhekaj’s hit on Hyman turned this around in the eyes of his teammates by doing a little thing that didn’t show up on the scoresheet but made a big difference.

And that was appropriate because little things that don’t show up on the scoresheet were a bit of a theme in this 3-0 Canadiens win.

After all, the Bouchard shot that Guhle thought might have broken his right hand didn’t even get recorded as a blocked shot, but rather as one of the 30 saves Sam Montembeault was credited for in registering his second shutout of the season.

Brendan Gallagher’s opening goal with 29.6 seconds left in the second period — to my eyes, the Canadiens’ best period of the season — only came after a relentless forecheck from Juraj Slafkovský, who was coming off a second-period benching in his last game.

Slafkovský did not get an assist on the play, but he made the goal happen by doing what he wasn’t doing in the second period against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday.

“Oh, my God, I was so tired I don’t even remember,” Slafkovský said. “I had just skated up and down the ice, like, four times, so I can’t even remember right now. I don’t even know if I touched it or even what happened there. Completely blacked out.”

On Guhle’s insurance goal, Cole Caufield got on the scoresheet because he set up the goal with an unselfish pass, but what made the play happen came a few seconds earlier.

Leon Draisaitl is officially listed at 209 pounds, or 34 pounds heavier than Caufield’s official weight of 175 pounds. But as Draisaitl collected the puck near the boards in his defensive zone, and with Caufield nearby, Caufield didn’t care one bit about that disparity.

He just cared more.

He shouldered Draisaitl off the puck, took it back and passed it to Jake Evans, and when Evans returned the favour, Caufield did not shoot it. He didn’t even consider shooting it. He immediately gave it to Guhle for the insurance goal.

“I don’t know, I was just playing the game,” Caufield said when asked about the size disparity between him and Draisaitl on that play. “Hockey’s a sport where you don’t need to be too big.

“It’s just timing and working hard.”

Focusing on the goals in this game would be doing a disservice to the steps the Canadiens appear to be taking. The plays that led to the goals should be the focus — the plays the Canadiens made consistently over the final 40 minutes after Montembeault allowed them to survive a bit of a jittery first period (with the help of one quick whistle from the officials).

“I think Monty definitely played a great first period to keep us in it,” Matheson said. “They had the momentum, and we weren’t playing as well as we could. We didn’t panic, though.”

This season has been a series of projects. It began with their play in the defensive zone, it continued with their risk management, and it continued again with their play in the offensive zone.

For perhaps the first time this season, all those elements came together at the same time against a potent opponent just waiting for one of those elements to slip so they could take advantage.

“We’re doing a really good job of managing our risk, and to me, that’s a big part of the actions that don’t help the other team, especially a team like tonight,” coach Martin St. Louis said. “They’re just waiting for you to try a maybe-this-might-work. They just live off maybes.

“And I felt like tonight, we had a lot of 100 percent plays. We manage our risk really well.”

The Canadiens enter a week in which they have time to work on some things, with no game until Saturday when they host the Vegas Golden Knights. They had a similar break after losing 7-2 to the New York Rangers on Oct. 22, which allowed St. Louis to dive deep on the defensive-zone play. They had a bag skate on the road against the Washington Capitals on Nov. 1 to drive home the point on puck management.

This time, however, the break in schedule comes when things are finally coming together. For once, it can serve to reinforce things as opposed to completely overhauling a deficient area.

(Photo of Kaiden Guhle and Cole Caufield: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)

Recent