MONTREAL — Martin St. Louis probably thought it would be the only time he would have to invoke the unpleasant image of his Montreal Canadiens throwing up all over themselves.
After a 6-3 loss in Washington on Halloween night, St. Louis hammered that point home, mentioning on four occasions that his players threw up all over themselves in turning pucks over and handing a win to the Capitals in the third period of a game that was tied 3-3.
The following day, St. Louis tried to make his players actually throw up, putting them through a bag skate the likes of which we had not seen since he became coach.
This week, as the Canadiens had three consecutive days of practice feeling pretty good about themselves after a convincing 3-0 win at home Monday against the Edmonton Oilers, several players were asked to think back to that bag skate, how it may have been a turning point in their season, how it may have sent a message that finally stuck.
The message being that puck management is of vital importance and taking risks with little potential of reward that result in turnovers is unacceptable.
“Absolutely, and at the time, that was the message,” Brendan Gallagher said Thursday after practice. “We kind of understood it wasn’t going to put us in the best possible position to win the next night, but over the long course of the season, it was needed and necessary for us to be in a better spot. There’s times where as a player, you understand that’s coming. It was a time when it was understood by our group, we put in the work, we did it, we went through it together.
“Looking back, it’s important for us to remember not to seep down to those bad habits, those levels, and how hard it was to get out of there. Hopefully, we’re starting to see the light now and we can kind of reap the benefits of it.”
On Saturday night, against the Vegas Golden Knights, the Canadiens threw up all over themselves again, losing 6-2 after an endless stream of risks with little potential of reward resulted in turnovers that wound up in the back of their net.
They did not reap the benefits of it. The message did not, in fact, stick.
Kirby Dach and Juraj Slafkovský are two young players vital to what the Canadiens are trying to build. And they are two young players who have had a difficult start to this season.
Dach is coming back from a devastating knee injury, and everyone accepted it would take him some time to find his game. Slafkovský is coming off a second half of last season that made it seem like he was on the verge of stardom and also coming off signing a long-term contract extension that made him a very rich young man.
Dach has not found his game yet, and Slafkovský did not pick up where he left off, and they are both frustrated.
Saturday morning, Slafkovský was openly talking about what needed to change in his game, and he admitted he had been talking about it for a while. The time had come for him to actually do it, to play a direct offensive game.
What does playing a direct offensive game mean?
“Just be heavy on the forecheck and win puck battles and make good decisions with the puck every time I have it anywhere on the ice,” Slafkovský said. “If I can get those small touches, make those little plays, then the bigger things will open up.
“I feel like I was trying to force the big things to happen without doing the little touches, without the body position, getting in front of guys. I don’t know honestly what I was thinking about.”
Later Saturday evening, with the Canadiens already down by two goals after a careless Dach turnover in his own zone led directly to Callahan Burke’s first NHL goal — one Dach referred to after the game as a “sh—y turnover” — Slafkovský was carrying the puck through the neutral zone when he hit the offensive blue line with support.
Except he did not make a good decision with the puck. He essentially made the same decision that got him benched for the second half of the second period against the Columbus Blue Jackets one week earlier.
He needlessly tried a cross-ice pass when there was a simpler, better play right in front of him.
IN HIS BARBIE WOOOOORLD 💈 pic.twitter.com/Hi7KcyfFOD
— Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) November 24, 2024
In other words, he tried to force the big thing to happen without doing the little touch.
“Bad decision-making,” he said after the game. “If I put the puck down the wall, they don’t have a two-on-0 on the other side. So yeah, I think it’s bad decision-making because I had good puck position.
“I just made a stupid play.”
St. Louis has been talking a lot about stages, and he’s been doing so in both a macro and micro sense.
The macro stage the Canadiens are in is learning how to win, as opposed to the purely developmental stage they were in before this season. In a micro sense, the week of practice was spent trying to find the balance between the conservative play that came out of that bag skate in Washington and identifying moments to express some offensive creativity. The Canadiens, he said, had swung the pendulum too far in the conservative direction, dumping pucks in when other options were available, options that had little risk attached to them, because that was his emphasis coming out of that bag skate.
St. Louis felt his team had understood the need to make responsible decisions with the puck in vulnerable areas of the ice, and now it could start to make some more aggressive decisions in the area from the top of the circles in its own end to the top of the circles in the offensive end, to identify opportunities and properly exploit them.
That’s what Slafkovský was evidently trying to do on that zone entry that led directly to the Golden Knights’ third goal.
Did St. Louis exit the stage of taking care of the puck and into the stage of trying to be more creative too quickly? Had he moved on to something else before his team was ready?
“I’m not moving on,” St. Louis said. “I think we’re going to be in this stage of learning how to win and stop doing the actions that help the other team and managing the puck at the right place.
“I’m going to stay in that stage for, you know, probably forever from now on.”
The Canadiens had a practice scheduled for Sunday. After throwing up all over themselves again, it might have been justified for St. Louis to drop the hammer again and punish his players.
They got the day off instead.
That is a reflection of the growth the Canadiens have shown since that bag skate in Washington. This one game was a step back to a place the Canadiens thought they had left behind, but it doesn’t erase the steps they had taken over the previous three weeks, the tightening of their defensive game, the heightened responsibility with the puck.
The Canadiens threw up all over themselves again, but the context was different this time. It was a blip in an otherwise responsible stretch of play, as opposed to what happened in Washington, an exaggerated example of what had been plaguing the Canadiens for weeks.
It will be up to them to prove it was nothing more than a blip.
“I know there’s going to be some dips here and there, it just comes with it,” St. Louis said. “But it shouldn’t be many dips.”
(Photo of Cayden Primeau allowing a third-period goal: David Kirouac / Imagn Images)
