Power play comes to life in feel-good win for Canadiens over Blues

ST. LOUIS — Martin St. Louis wasn’t feeling overly selective after his Montreal Canadiens earned a 7-4 win over the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night.

When asked after the game to point to what he liked most about his team’s performance, the coach of the Canadiens rattled off a laundry list of items — Christian Dvorak’s strong early-season play finally resulting in goals (three of them, to be exact, for his first of the season and the first hat trick of his career); Juraj Slafkovsky returning from a two-game absence with an upper-body injury and playing the best of his six NHL games to date; the Canadiens turning a 3-1 deficit into a 6-3 lead and closing out the game strong against a Blues team hoping to avoid its first four-game losing streak since Craig Berube took over from Mike Yeo as coach in November of 2018 — and said he was happy about all of it.

But St. Louis also mentioned the Canadiens’ power play connecting for two goals, and we’d suggest that was the biggest positive for his team to take out of this game.

They were the Canadiens’ first 5-on-4 goals of the season. They came in succession in the second period after a failed opportunity that bled from late in the first period to early in the second brought them to 0-for-24 at 5-on-4 for the season. And it’s how they were scored that should give St. Louis the most satisfaction.

Slafkovsky played pitch and catch with Chris Wideman on the first one, first pushing the puck to the point and then preparing to receive it back and force it on net with a one-timed slap shot.

Brendan Gallagher provided the screen in front, and Slafkovsky “broke the seal,” according to Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki, who played a key role in Montreal’s second power play goal just two minutes and 41 seconds later.

He first drove the puck down low and found Sean Monahan in front of the net. Monahan took Suzuki’s pass and attempted a between-the-legs shot that Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington kicked aside.

Then the Canadiens regrouped. Kirby Dach got the puck in the high slot, Mike Hoffman set a screen driving through, and Suzuki rolled off it, got the pass from Dach, looked towards making a play at Monahan in front of the net again and deceptively passed to Cole Caufield on the back door to collect his 100^th NHL assist.

These two goals were the product of a meeting the Canadiens had about their power play on Friday; they were the application of lessons learned the hard way through their first eight games, and they exemplified the biggest point of emphasis St. Louis stresses in all game situations — making the right reads on the ice.

“To me, the power play is all about: where’s the advantage? Obviously, we’re 5-on-4. But where’s the advantage on the ice,” St. Louis asked. “That changes all the time. So, can you figure out, the five guys, where’s the advantage now? Because in three seconds, five seconds, it might be different where the advantage is, and you have to recognize that and play into where the advantage is. I thought we did that tonight.”

That was particularly the case on Caufield’s goal, which brought his season total to seven and vaulted him into a tie with several players for second in the NHL in the category.

“We can’t give them the same look every single time,” said Suzuki. “They’re going to read it, and they know Cole’s over there being the shooter. But being able to come down low and attack with Monny and Dacher in the slot, I think we got a lot more looks.”

The seams opened up from there and the puck hit the back of the net.

Even if it came off the stick of the most likely guy to be shooting it, the Canadiens used enough of their options before that to create enough doubt to enable Suzuki to slip that sly pass over to Caufield.

“Spooky Suzuki,” said Caufield.

Sneaky would’ve been more apt, but the 21-year-old was going Halloween-themed with his description of the play.

There was nothing particularly deceptive about how Slafkovsky scored, and that was the beauty of it.

St. Louis had stressed simplicity earlier in the week, after the Canadiens not only failed to score in a 3-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild but completely surrendered momentum on the power play.

“If you have to move it 10 times before you take a shot, it’s probably not the right strategy and you’re not breaking down the PK,” he said. “To me, a good PP is two, three passes and a strike and retrieve and do it again. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be a beautiful goal, but you have to have some strikes. You have to send pucks towards the net. And even if sometimes it doesn’t get to the net, you might break an opponent’s stick and it hurts blocking shots. And if guys are in the right places, usually you retrieve those and you do it again.

“But to think that we have to make 10, 12 passes before we shoot — you’re not breaking down the PK. We have to do a better job of that.”

To execute it against a Blues team that, as Suzuki pointed out, was the second-best penalty-killing team in the NHL last season, is a confidence booster for a Canadiens team in desperate need of one on the power play.

They had a lot to feel good about after this game wrapped. They battled hard to claw back from down 3-1. They played disciplined after allowing the Blues to score seven seconds into their first power play of the night. They got huge contributions from Dvorak and other forwards not named Suzuki or Caufield.

And, as St. Louis said, they got Slafkovsky’s best game of his young NHL career.

“Not because he scored, not because he played on the power play, but…I feel like every shift he got I feel like he got on base,” St. Louis clarified. “He had his home run ball on that power play, and he took advantage of it, and he scored…”

“He played very strong, physically, tonight,” he continued. “And like I said, it’s a process for Slaf at 18. He’s got a nice skill package, but he’s gotta figure out what kind of player he’s going to be in this league, what style he’s going to have to play, and he’s going through that right now. And, tonight, we saw what we know we have in a big boy for an 18-year-old, and he played like a big boy tonight.”

All the Canadiens did, including former Blues goaltender Jake Allen, who made 26 saves and assisted on Dvorak’s deal-sealing, empty-net goal at 18:25 of the third period.

The atmosphere in the room afterwards was festive.

“It's a fun environment right now, and we have to earn that fun,” said St. Louis. “The fun is something you earn every day, and I think we're doing that. Whether we win or lose the game, I think we're earning our fun.”

A big part of that on this night was the power play players tuning into adjustments the coach wanted to make — not just to the tactics but also to the mindset — and executing.

“I think we’re all good players out there,” said Suzuki. “it’s just reading the play. It’s not set options that he wants us to do, it’s just taking advantage of what’s given to us, reading the P.K. and being in the right spots.”