Canadiens' attention to detail is not yet up to standard, and the Kraken exposed it

MONTREAL — Sam Montembeault needs to be better than he was Tuesday night to give the Montreal Canadiens a chance to reach their goals this season. Let’s get that out of the way immediately.

That is a natural takeaway after Montembeault allowed five goals on 10 shots before the game was 22 minutes old, making the Seattle Kraken’s 8-2 win inevitable and chasing him from the game for the second time in a week.

But that’s not all that happened Tuesday night, and it’s not the whole story.

Montembeault deserves some benefit of the doubt. He has established a track record over the last two seasons, and though he has an .829 save percentage since allowing one goal on 73 shots in his first two starts, much of that came during a period when the Canadiens’ defensive zone was a mess.

That was less true Tuesday against Seattle, and coach Martin St. Louis was willing to look at it as a one-off as a result.

But what has St. Louis said from the outset this season? That he will be more demanding about the details of the game from his players, and two goals were scored Tuesday that came as a result of not paying attention to detail.

The opening goal by Jamie Oleksiak came off a defensive-zone faceoff loss, and it appeared as though it was Kirby Dach’s responsibility to get out to Oleksiak, and he didn’t.

HE’S CLOCKED IN AND READY TO GO.

p.s. this is the fourth fastest we’ve ever scored in a game ☺️ pic.twitter.com/YN6XdWw9qz

— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) October 29, 2024

The goal that made it 6-1 Seattle also came off a defensive-zone faceoff loss, and again it appeared as though Dach lost his assignment as Brandon Montour cut backdoor and scored his second of three consecutive goals.

MONTY SCORES OFF HIS OWN REBOUND. 👑 pic.twitter.com/g1shNbcTNx

— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) October 30, 2024

That goal came at 8:44 of the second period. Dach played one more shift in the second and four more in the third period for 3:41 of ice time over the final 31:16.

But this is not only about Dach. This is about details and setting a standard.

Because allowing goals off defensive-zone faceoff losses has been a trend this season. Oleksiak and Montour became the sixth and seventh players this season to score on the Canadiens within 15 seconds of winning an offensive-zone faceoff. All but one of those goals were scored by defencemen, and the only one that wasn’t — by Los Angeles Kings forward Alex Laferriere — came on a tip off a point shot.

Though five of those seven goals came in two games, it’s not difficult to infer the Canadiens have been suffering lapses in nailing their coverage on defencemen off defensive-zone faceoff losses.

St. Louis focused so much on his team’s defensive-zone play last week that he spoke a lot about gray areas and how he was looking to eliminate some of that gray in adjusting how his team plays in the defensive zone. But hockey is filled with gray areas; it’s not all black and white, except for one area of the game where St. Louis has said he feels there is zero gray. It is all black and white.

And that area is faceoffs.

“There’s no confusion,” St. Louis said Tuesday of his team’s coverage off faceoffs. “It’s to do your job. You need five guys to do their job.”

So, you can look at the game’s opening goal by Oleksiak as an unlucky break because his relatively innocuous shot hit Mike Matheson in front and made its way behind Montembeault 25 seconds into the game, but that’s not how St. Louis looks at it. He sees it as a lack of attention to detail, something he is far less willing to tolerate this season and something that continues creeping into the Canadiens’ game.

“Is it bad luck?” St. Louis asked. “Not really. We didn’t do our job off a faceoff.”

Nick Suzuki, who lost that faceoff, agreed.

“Usually, we’re a pretty detailed team on faceoffs; we talk about it a lot,” he said. “First goal was definitely on us.”

Exactly a week earlier, after being handed a 7-2 loss on home ice by the New York Rangers, St. Louis used it as a sign that he needed to drill down deep on the Canadiens’ defensive-zone play. With three days off before their next game, that drubbing by the Rangers served a useful purpose, allowing St. Louis and the team to focus on a specific aspect of their game.

It worked.

The Canadiens had an excellent weekend, collecting two victories on a back-to-back with travel and looking vastly improved in their defensive-zone coverage. This was their third game in four nights, but still, there are certain details St. Louis considers to be nonnegotiable, and faceoff coverage assignments are one of them.

There were other problems in this loss, let’s be clear, with goaltending being a major one.

But in terms of looking at Tuesday’s game as a sign of what the Canadiens need to fix, goaltending is not the one that jumps off the page. It’s the faceoff issue because it’s been a recurring problem. And for a team looking to mature and become much more detail-oriented and a winner, that should be troublesome.

Jake Evans mentioned the need to mature after that loss to the Rangers a week earlier, and though the weekend might have been an example of that maturity setting in, an ability to self-correct and erase problem areas, this was another reminder of how difficult it is for a young team to attain that maturity.

Was this loss indicative of the team’s lack of maturity?

“I don’t know,” Evans said. “I think the biggest thing is we can’t get too high on ourselves. We have a great weekend, and this league is really hard. Every team’s coming after you, especially when you’re playing here; I know every team gets a bit of energy playing here. Maybe we got a little bit too high going into this game and thought it might have been a bit easier.

“Obviously, it wasn’t.”

The Canadiens will go through ups and downs this season. That’s normal. And though Tuesday’s score looks like a massive down, it wasn’t. Montembeault could have made a few more saves, sure. But losing the third game when you are playing three in four nights is not all that alarming, especially when you won the first two.

But the attention to detail, again, is something St. Louis has said is a priority for this team in its maturation process, as something that needs to be a nonnegotiable, and it was flagrantly lacking Tuesday.

The road to maturity is littered with obstacles, and this was yet another example.

(Photo of Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour taking the puck away from Josh Anderson: Eric Bolte / Imagn Images)