MONTREAL — It’s a game like Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes that magnifies what’s missing from the Canadiens’ arsenal.
We’ve reached the point in the season—with eight games remaining—where coaches of teams headed to the Stanley Cup playoffs have a strong semblance of how they want their lines to be assembled. Roles have already been firmly established. Chemistry, too.
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That’s not to say some fluidity isn’t par for the course. It’s a rarity that all 20 skaters are performing to capacity in any given game, and a tweak here or there can go a long way towards keeping everyone on their toes.
In a team game like hockey, that’s an essential ingredient to winning.
But shuffling the entire deck game after game—as Claude Julien’s had to do since taking over from Michel Therrien as Canadiens coach—is probably indicative of a larger issue. No matter what changes the coach decides on, it’s becoming clearer and clearer there are holes in this Montreal roster that Julien can’t fill.
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“In a way, I’d love to be able to have some set lines,” said Julien after Thursday’s loss. “I think when you look at some of the lines—the way they’ve played lately—would you stick with them?”
There aren’t too many people around Montreal who would answer in the affirmative.
With leading scorers Max Pacioretty and Alexander Radulov failing to produce much of anything with Alex Galchenyuk as their centre over four consecutive games, Julien opted for wholesale changes against Carolina.
Phillip Danault, who had played the majority of his games this season between Pacioretty and Radulov jumped back into place. Galchenyuk moved to the left wing and opened the scoring in the first period on a line that featured Andrew Shaw as a converted centreman and Artturi Lehkonen as a converted right-winger.
Steve Ott and Dwight King, who both dressed as members of the fourth line against Detroit on Tuesday, sat for Andreas Martinsen and Michael McCarron. Torrey Mitchell completed the trio by moving from centre to right wing. Out went Nathan Beaulieu on defence, in came Brandon Davidson.
But given the way the game played out, with the Canadiens blowing the early lead and failing to generate more than six shots while down a goal in the third period, Julien has no choice but to revisit the drawing board.
“That’s where I’m at,” he said. “It’s my job as a coach to try and find the right combinations… before we get too deep into the rest of the regular-season schedule. Hopefully I can find some lines that balance it out well and get us a good four lines going every night. We haven’t got that yet.”
It’s not as if Julien isn’t pressing any of the right buttons.
The Canadiens are 10-5-1 with him at the helm, and they’ve established an identity as a hard-working, fast team that rarely sleeps on a lead or a deficit as it did against Carolina.
But as Julien continues to work Beaulieu, Davidson and Alexei Emelin into a rotation on defence for the purpose of keeping all of his players fresh, he’s yet to find a suitable partner for Jeff Petry on the team’s second pair. As he continues to move players in and out of the centre position, he can’t ignore that the team doesn’t have an established No. 1 at its disposal.
Those problems cost the Canadiens two points against Carolina on Thursday.
Not that the Hurricanes don’t deserve some of the credit. They have just one regulation-time loss in their last 11 games and sit just five points back of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
On this night, Carolina was better in nearly every department—from goaltender Eddie Lack, who made 22 saves, to Elias Lindholm, Lee Stempniak and Jeff Skinner, who scored the goals.
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“It’s a whole other animal when you’re playing without that pressure, with that nothing-to-lose attitude,” said Pacioretty. “It seems like they have that right now and they’re playing really well.”
The Canadiens, on the other hand, are playing on a nightly basis with the Atlantic Division on the line.
Their next opponent—the Ottawa Senators—picked up a shootout win over the Pittsburgh Penguins to pull within one point of Montreal’s lead. They own a game in hand, too.
“There’s no panic,” said Pacioretty. “We’ve played so well in the past before… [Galchenyuk] looked more comfortable on the wing, I think [Shaw] did well in the dot at the right times and did well in his own end… I can only speak for our line—it’ll come. We like our team, we like our combinations, we like what we have in this room.”
But it’s clear the Canadiens are missing something.
