NEW YORK — It was in the middle of the second period in Sunday’s 2-0 loss to the New York Rangers that Tomas Plekanec had a wide-open look at Henrik Lundqvist’s net and seemingly all the time in the world to pull the trigger. He slipped on the ice, fell to his knees, and dribbled the puck into Lundqvist’s pads.
Sometimes when it rains, it pours.
The Canadiens have begun their season with a shootout win and two regulation losses, they haven’t led for a single second, they haven’t scored more than one even-strength goal, and their power play has looked lethal but has yet to inflict any pain.
It is now 0-for-10 on the season.
“It’s frustrating,” said Plekanec after Sunday’s game.
How can it not be? The team had 45 shots in their season-opening win over the Buffalo Sabres this past Thursday and scored only twice. They held a 20-6 advantage in shots in the second period of Game 2 on Saturday and only managed one goal.
And on Sunday the Canadiens spent the majority of their night in the offensive zone and came up with nothing.
“The chances are there,” said coach Claude Julien. “Our finish is the issue. We have to find a way to pierce through. We did that on a couple of occasions tonight, but the goals were waved off.”
Tough breaks, indeed.
But early on, when Andrew Shaw deliberately kicked a puck into Lundqvist and it ricocheted off the goaltender’s skate and into the net, it was fairly obvious the goal would be overturned.
There wasn’t much to argue with moments later, when Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty made contact with Lundqvist while teammate Shea Weber’s shot deflected off Rangers captain Ryan McDonagh and floated over the goal-line. Lundqvist was impeded from making a save on the play, the goal was reversed, and the Canadiens ended up with nothing to show for recording eight of the first 10 shots of the game.
They had come to Madison Square Garden after taking it on the chin in Washington a night earlier, losing 6-1 and allowing Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin to score four times on them. They were after some redemption on that front and certainly out for it after failing to score more than 11 goals in a six-game loss to the Rangers in the first round of the last year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Canadiens forward Alex Galchenyuk, who recorded two of Montreal’s 34 shots on Sunday, admitted the loss felt like a dose of déjà vu.
“You try not to think about it, but it seems to be a problem right now,” he said. “But we’ve gotta keep working hard, and in the end we’ll find a solution.”
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The Canadiens have plenty of doubters on that front. Peruse social media for a few seconds, type “Habs” into the search bar and you’ll find no shortage of people expressing their concern.
Whether or not it’s justified is up for debate.
The Canadiens may not be loaded with firepower, but they have scoring threats on each of their four lines. Pacioretty’s a perennial 30-goal scorer, and 22-year-old linemate Jonathan Drouin is on the upswing of his career, coming off a 53-point performance in 2016-17, and he’s proven to be prolific at every level of hockey. Line 2 features the 23-year-old Galchenyuk, who scored 30 goals two seasons ago and has the talent to turn a game on its side in a matter of seconds, Artturi Lehkonen and Charles Hudon have the offensive pedigree to drive things from the third line, and 22-goal scorer Paul Byron is currently balancing things out from the fourth.
They may not make up a team that will regularly score more than four goals a game, but it can certainly do better than just one.
“Obviously we’ve gotta be hungrier around the net and just keep pushing forward,” said Lehkonen. That hasn’t really been his issue — he ranks second on the team in shots on goal with 12, most of them coming from close to the crease — but some of his teammates can heed the advice.
Drouin, Pacioretty and Brendan Gallagher aren’t among them. All three had stellar opportunities in Sunday’s game and were thwarted by Lundqvist, who was coming off two haphazard performances to start the season and appeared primed to do what he inevitably did on Sunday.
At the other end of the ice, Rangers defenceman Brady Skjei was standing by the end boards when he banked one in off Weber to give his team a 1-0 lead near the end of the first period. Mika Zibanejad scored his fourth goal of the season 9:13 into the third, when he snuck his way into some open space near Canadiens goaltender Carey Price and got a clean look at the net.
The Canadiens haven’t gotten a bounce like Skjei’s since the season began. They know it, but they aren’t pinning their offensive struggles on hard luck.
“We have to bear down,” said Plekanec, who has scored just 24 goals in his last 162 games.
Some line shuffling from Julien might be in order as well. He hinted that he’d consider making some changes.
The Canadiens will have to hope they bear fruit when the high-flying Chicago Blackhawks help them open up the Bell Centre on Tuesday.
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