The Montreal Canadiens were obviously disappointed with how they performed against the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday. Giving up five goals in one period will do that to a team.
But what drove home the disappointment was what coach Martin St. Louis said the morning of the game. He was talking about building an identity, a key component of this season for a young team, and the mere fact he was talking about it meant he felt his team was on the verge of something.
“For sure, when you bring pace on both sides of the ice, you make it harder on the other team,” St. Louis said Saturday morning. “And I think, as a young team, we’re trying to find an identity, and I think bringing that pace is a big part of our conversations.”
We hear that word a lot, pace. But that word is not as simple as it sounds. It not only means skating fast, though that is a part of it. It is a multi-faceted concept of the game, as St. Louis later explained.
“Yeah, there’s two types of pace, actually three when you think about it,” St. Louis said. “And I think it affects both (of the other ones), but to me, mental pace is huge. And the mental pace is you can’t start playing the game when the puck hits your stick, you’ve got to know what’s going to happen. Are you using your feet, which is another kind of pace, just foot pace? Or are you letting the puck do the work, which is puck pace?
“So if you have mental pace, you’ll know what to do next, and that’s why I always talk about not necessarily where the puck is, it’s the other four guys. So, pace is everything, there’s different kinds of pace, and we talk about it all the time.”
And though there are three different kinds of pace, mental pace is clearly the foundation of everything St. Louis is trying to build with the Canadiens. When his defensive zone hybrid system was questioned, he basically said if you don’t have the mental pace to execute, maybe the NHL is not for you. When talking about his team’s play in the offensive zone, St. Louis talks about offensive anticipation a lot. Again, mental pace.
So to see the Canadiens make several mental errors that night when he felt they were verging on building an identity centred on mental pace had to be doubly disappointing.
But getting a definition of what St. Louis feels his team’s identity will be once these growing pains are ironed out was interesting. And mental pace is, ultimately, centred on hockey IQ and having a strong hockey processor.
While St. Louis has always felt confident that hockey IQ can be taught, and while the Canadiens have worked very hard to provide their players with the resources necessary to improve their hockey IQ, there is a strong contingent of hockey people who feel it can’t be taught and have felt that way for a long time.
Being smart, after all, is largely an innate trait, is it not? Having a brain that can take in a lot of information in a very short period of time and process it quickly to come up with the best decision is not something every player can do at the NHL level, no matter how talented they are.
And if there was any doubt of that reality, his players went out and proved it that night by making a stream of mental errors.
But really, more so than a lack of hockey IQ, what that game displayed was a lack of discipline and patience, which is normal on a young team. It can be weeded out with experiences like the game against Vegas, little reminders of what happens when you lose that discipline.
Slafkovský and Dach lay out their mental battles
Juraj Slafkovský and Kirby Dach were front and centre in making those undisciplined mental errors on Saturday, with a Dach turnover leading to the second Vegas goal and a Slafkovský turnover leading to the third.
Perhaps it will be a lesson learned for each of them, but the reality is the fact each of them are fighting it right now was likely a contributing factor in those costly turnovers. When you’re not producing offensively and are as naturally talented as each of them is, the temptation to try plays that create offence can overwhelm the sense of responsibility St. Louis is trying to impart to his team.
Saturday morning, Slafkovský talked about what he needed to do to be more effective in the offensive zone. We’ve often heard both him and St. Louis say he needs to be more direct offensively, but what does that mean?
“I’ve been saying this, but I’ve just got to move my feet and just be more straightforward in the O-zone, then it will be good. It’s not there yet,” Slafkovský said.
If he’s been saying it, why isn’t he doing it?
“I don’t know. I actually don’t know,” he said. “Last year I was moving them, but this year, I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking too much about how I need to do this, this, this and this. Maybe I’m too much in my head that I’m going to dangle four guys or whatever.”
For his part, St. Louis didn’t disagree with Slafkovský’s assessment, which means this is something he has communicated to his young project.
“When I say direct with Slaf, it’s foot pace. He’s got to move his feet. He’s got to be direct with that,” St. Louis said Saturday morning. “Whatever happens next, I’m not worried about it, but I know a lot more good things are going to happen when — he’s a big boy — when he’s got foot pace. And it starts with him anticipating and moving his feet, and when he does that he brings heaviness to the game.”
As for Dach, last week he made an admission, an important one at this point of his season. His pace is a major mitigating factor.
“I don’t think I’m playing bad hockey at all, it’s just, I think I’m playing safe. I think (unconsciously), it is what it is after an injury like that,” Dach said after practice Wednesday. “So I’m trying to work my way out of it, get back to holding on to pucks and making plays and being able to produce.”
Dach tried to make a play in his own zone against Vegas, but it was the wrong play at the wrong time at the wrong area of the ice. So much of what the Canadiens believe Dach can be is based on what he showed them at a young age two seasons ago. But until he can get past playing safe, until he gets back to playing with a certain controlled recklessness, with some nasty bite to his game, that high ceiling he showed two seasons ago will remain elusive.
St. Louis expressed confidence last week that he can get that version of Dach back again, that he simply needs to get Dach to take a wider view of the game again as opposed to viewing it through a “toilet paper roll.” When Dach plays with that wide view, St. Louis said, the result is “special.”
That game against Vegas, that turnover off a no-look pass in his own end, was the epitome of toilet roll hockey.
“I feel for Dacher, he missed a lot of time and it’s frustrating for him because we all know how good he can be,” St. Louis said after the game Saturday. “So I feel for Dacher. They want to help, and it’s a fine line between helping and hurting.”
The “they” here refers to both Dach and Slafkovský. The question he was asked was about the two of them because they were so central to that loss, but also because they are so central to what the Canadiens are trying to build.
And while Dach seems a bit lost in the wilderness right now, Slafkovský still seems to have some healthy perspective.
When told Saturday morning that this was around the time of year he found his game last season, Slafkovský laughed.
“But also last year at around this time I had like two points,” he said, “so I think I’m in a better place.”
Last year on Nov. 25, Slafkovský in fact had six points, but his point is valid and healthy. As poorly as things are going for him, he’s seen worse and he got out of it.
Heineman has been here before
Back when the Canadiens traded Tyler Toffoli to the Calgary Flames for a first-round pick and Emil Heineman — the first step in the rebuild — Heineman was playing in the Swedish Hockey League for Leksands IF.
And he was playing on their fourth line.
Leksands GM Thomas Johansson told us at the time Heineman was not only on the fourth line, he was playing on the best fourth line in the SHL.
“He’s been a perfect fit for us. We have a fourth line, they’re finishing checks, they’re doing the hard forecheck for us. The work ethic on that line is so high, that’s why Emil is such a good fit with the other two guys playing with him,” Johansson said back then. “When he gets in position and he uses his shot, he has the ability to score. And this fourth line is pretty much the best fourth line in the whole SHL. Their advanced stats are fantastic, so they are the best fourth line in the whole league.
“I checked on that line compared to the other fourth lines in the league, and they are always above 50 percent in expected goals even if they always have the faceoff in our end pretty much all the time.”
This explains why Heineman has been so good in the fourth-line role he is filling in Montreal right now, because his role is essentially the same.
“Me and the other winger, we would just go, and the more pucks we won back, the more energy we got to do it again,” Heineman said last week of his role on Leksands two years ago. “So yeah, pretty similar to now.”
Heineman has the best shot attempt share percentage on the Canadiens at five-on-five, a testament to how much time his line, currently with Joel Armia and Lucas Condotta, spends in the offensive zone. His speed and physicality on the forecheck have been an integral part of his success, much like it was in Sweden when the Canadiens traded for him.
“I don’t do it just to hit,” Heineman said. “It’s part of my game to win pucks, and I feel like we’ve been winning a lot of pucks up ice. We’ve got to keep it going.”
The physicality and the forechecking would be great on their own, but what makes Heineman such an intriguing part of the Canadiens’ future is his shot, something he’s worked on diligently for years, spending entire summers in Sweden by himself shooting buckets of pucks every day.
A fun fact that came as a result of Heineman’s garbage time power-play goal in the thrid period Saturday: Among all NHL players with at least 15 minutes of ice time on the power play, Heineman leads the league in goals per 60 minutes on the power play with 7.65.
It’s a small sample size because Heineman has just barely played more than 15 power-play minutes, but everything he has shown so far this season would suggest he will be a part of this rebuild and could be a player on this team when it is actually good.
But he’s not thinking that far ahead.
“I’m just trying to keep it day by day, actually,” he said. “That’s the main thing. I always check in mentally that you’re ready to go. Compete and battle. I don’t take it for granted and I just want to go out there and do my best.”
The importance of December
Despite how the Canadiens season has gone so far, despite them being last in the Eastern Conference and second to last in the NHL, they are not out of the mix because so many teams have been so bad to start the season.
Yes, there are seven teams between them and a playoff spot right now, and the seven points standing between them and the final playoff spot in the East is a wide gap, the Canadiens are not completely out of it. It would, however, take a remarkable run over the next three weeks to prevent them being out of it by Christmas.
Why? Because Christmas marks the start of an almost impossible stretch of games for the Canadiens. As it does every year.
The Canadiens play back to back in Florida and Tampa Bay on Dec. 28 and 29. Then they travel to Las Vegas to play on New Year’s Eve. Then they travel to Chicago to play Jan. 3 and, for some inexplicable reason, play the next night in Denver.
So, the next stretch of games is vitally important for the Canadiens to build a decent cushion before their post-Christmas trip. As of right now, only five of their next 14 games are against teams currently in a playoff spot.
Last season, the Canadiens went 3-3-1 on their Christmas trip, and the year before they went 1-5-1. It’s typically a time of year when their season goes south, and the schedule this year is particularly bad.
If the Canadiens want to be in the mix, the time is now to make a surge, because tough times are ahead.
(Top photo of Kirby Dach, Jack Eichel and Juraj Slafkovský: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
