NEW YORK — Martin St. Louis has been steering the Montreal Canadiens towards this moment ever since he first stood behind their bench four years ago, and the things that happened both during and after Thursday’s win over the New York Rangers provided more evidence they’ve finally met it.
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.
It’s 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.
But Thursday’s 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.
And after they did that on what proved to be the winning goal, which came off Cole Caufield’s stick less than one minute removed from Will Cuylle tying the game for the Rangers, Nick Suzuki said something that reinforced that the Canadiens don’t need to rely exclusively on their coach to hold them to the standards they’ve set for themselves.
“I didn’t really love our 60 minutes,” Suzuki said. “I 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’t be playing that way. I think we took it a bit too lightly.”
St. Louis didn’t hear him say it, but it was music to his ears to be told that’s how his captain assessed the game.
“I’m fine with that,” St. Louis said. “I know that we have better than tonight. But overall, I felt like we put ourselves in a spot to win the game.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The Canadiens were in control of this one right up to the point they weren’t.
They played a largely responsible opening 20 minutes, notched a lead on Alex Newhook’s 12th goal 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.
You’d think it would’ve (should’ve) been easier against this Rangers team — 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 — but St. Louis knew it wouldn’t be.
“When you’re 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,” he said. “But I didn’t feel like our intentions were so off. We weren’t 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.”
What the coach liked more, though, was that it wasn’t good enough for the players.
“Now you talk about standards, and Suzy’s right,” St. Louis said. “He 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’ve gone lately, where we are in this road trip, I’ve got to be careful in beating (up) the group if the standards are not there. But I’m ok if the players stand up and talk about it. That’s very reassuring for the coach.”
What happened less than one minute after Cuylle scored, just seconds before Caufield scored his 49th to get to within one of NHL leading scorer Nathan MacKinnon and ice the game, checked another box.
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.
The linesman pump-faked and didn’t drop the puck, issuing a warning to Rangers centre J.T. Miller, and that’s when the Canadiens players on the ice called an audible.
Instructions flew around and Dobson, who was initially stationed on the boards to Suzuki’s 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.
“They noticed that I think the Rangers were lined up on one side of the ice for a one-timer setup,” said St. Louis, “and we took advantage of the weak (side of the) ice.”
He did no yelling from the bench. He just watched his players tap into the type of mental engagement that’s become second nature to them to plan and execute the most important play of the game.
“We talk about that,” said St. Louis. “We have plenty of options of how we want to exit if we win faceoffs, but there’s situations I feel you’ve gotta notice things and you’ve gotta take advantage of it, and it’s stuff that we talk about, and I’m glad that we took the initiative to do that.”
It’s where the Canadiens are at in their process.
They’ve been building towards this for so long, and now it’s here — deep in a season that’s already seen them collect 98 points.
With seven games remaining, they’re two points out of first in the Atlantic Division and four points out of first in the Eastern Conference, and they’re giving their coach reasons to believe he has no reason to white-knuckle his grip on the steering wheel.
On top of that, the stars who pressure themselves to make the difference night in, night out, are doing exactly that.
Slafkovsky’s assist Thursday brought him to 67 points on the season, with 10 of them coming over this winning streak. Suzuki’s two assists got him to 94 points, and they were two of the 10 assists he’s had in the last seven games. Caufield has scored 12 of his 49 goals over his last 11 games, and now he’s staring at a chance to notch his 50th on his favourite night of the week.
If Mr. Saturday Night doesn’t deliver at Prudential Center, he’ll get another crack at it on Sunday, when the Canadiens play the Devils in Montreal.
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’s had since being recalled from Laval a couple weeks ago. Jakub Dobes, who’s stopped 136 of the last 141 shots he’s faced, will likely play on Saturday.
St. Louis has to love what he’s getting from both goaltenders.
As he always says, he just lets them be, and they’re making that easy for him.
The coach isn’t about to completely take a hands-off approach with the rest of the team, but Thursday’s game should’ve only made him more confident that the Canadiens can take care of themselves.
