Weekend wins for Canadiens calms noise around Martin St. Louis

It was three straight days of noise following a bad loss to the New York Rangers at the beginning of the week. 

Noise about how the Canadiens were the leakiest team in the NHL, with four straight losses increasing the volume about how they couldn’t apply the hybrid system coach Martin St. Louis wanted them to play. 

It reached eardrum-piercing level as Friday rolled around, with St. Louis under fire from every direction.

He and the Canadiens shut it down this weekend, rattling off back-to-back wins against the St. Louis Blues and Philadelphia Flyers to climb back into the Atlantic Division mix — a slurry of sorts, with five of eight teams (including the Canadiens) currently holding a 4-4-1 record.

The results matter, no doubt. 

The way they were achieved matters more.

We’re talking about a team that gave up at least 17 high-danger attempts per game in three of its first six contest before giving up just 19 total over the weekend.

And that number inflated mostly due to score effects, with the Canadiens holding two- and three-goal leads in the third periods over the Blues and Flyers, respectively. 

They suffocated both teams in all three zones for most of these 120 minutes. They managed the puck well and released it to the right areas to establish a highly effective forecheck. They tracked back hard through the middle to allow their defencemen to kill the majority of rushes at their defensive blue line. And when the puck ended up in their zone, the Canadiens sorted out coverage quickly and pounced on opportunities to break up cycles and transition back to offence.

It was everything they failed to do against the Rangers and everything St. Louis instructed them to correct as the noise around him grew and grew and inevitably found its way to his ears.

“I’ll tell you why I don’t listen,” St. Louis said when we asked him about it on Friday. “Why would I listen to a critic from somebody that I would never go to advice for?” 

Still, he acknowledged that he heard the noise.

“It’s funny because yesterday I was walking to the Bell Centre, going to work,” St. Louis explained. “There was a couple fans that stopped me and said, ‘Don’t listen to them, keep working,’ so I realized this is happening. 

“It’s part of the market, but it’s not going to change what I do, and it’s not going to make me upset. 

“But if it does one thing…it fuels me.”

He noted it always has.

St. Louis carved out his path to the Hockey Hall of Fame as an undrafted, undersized player who ritually silenced his critics and doubters. So, he was right back in a familiar spot this week — albeit, really, for the first time as coach.

Had the weekend gone down differently, it might have signalled the official end of the honeymoon phase St. Louis has enjoyed since taking over the rebuilding Canadiens in February of 2022.

Instead, we saw progress, which might incite a few mea culpas to him from around Montreal.

Not that the Canadiens were perfect.

But even if the game against the Flyers ended 4-3, St. Louis rightfully pointed out to reporters at Wells Fargo Center afterwards that, “If you didn’t see the game and just looked at the scoresheet, you’d think it was a close game.”

It wasn’t, until the Canadiens made a mistake that ended up in the back of their net with 2:12 remaining in the third period. 

Travis Sanheim’s marker cut Philadelphia’s deficit to two goals. 

Before he scored it, head coach John Tortorella appeared to have no intention of pulling Aleksei Kolosov (who was appearing in his first NHL game) and putting on an extra attacker because the game felt like a lost cause.

The Canadiens had given up next to nothing to that point, and then they allowed another goal after Sanheim’s just 29 seconds later and forced themselves to tighten the vice back up to close this one out. 

In a sense, it was good that happened. It served as a reminder of the aggressive defensive play that netted them these two wins and how tenuous a good feeling can become when they sleep on the gameplan.

Not unlike the loss to the Rangers, which was the ugliest of the four consecutive losses they suffered. 

While so many ranted and raved about it, St. Louis saw it as an opportunity to get the Canadiens on track.

He was confident the work he undertook this week would pay dividends, and he was right.

“I think we’re much closer to the version we want to become, and sometimes that version comes with some failure along the way that propels you to a better version of yourself,” he said after the win in Philadelphia. “I think it gets us to a better version quicker when you have some failures early.”

Quick Hits:

• Cole Caufield took his share of the NHL lead in goals by scoring his eighth in his ninth game of the season. 

He scored his eighth goal in his 30^th game last season.

As he struggled to get there a year ago before finishing reasonably strong with 20 goals over his last 52 games, St. Louis said all along he wasn’t worried about Caufield’s scoring returning to the level we’ve become accustomed to and he repeatedly lauded him for submitting to the process of rounding out his game.

Caufield’s all-around game is now coming back around to what it was last season after a tepid start with his linemates earlier this month. And even if his shooting percentage drops from 30.8 — and it surely will — don’t expect it to plummet down to the level it was at last season.

Prior to Caufield shooting at just 8.9 per cent then, he scored on 14 per cent of his shots through his first three seasons in the league. If he continues to shoot at the same frequency he has so far and scores on 14 per cent of his shots through the remaining games of the season, he’ll put up more than 40 goals for the first time in his career.

• Big weekend for Kirby Dach, who posted his first goal and added an assist Saturday to double his point total from the first seven games before registering an assist on Nick Suzuki’s goal against the Flyers.

You saw the confidence swell for him in Philadelphia, which is good news for Dach — and certainly for the Canadiens.

They have him filling in on the wing for the injured Juraj Slafkovsky, who missed this whole week with an upper-body injury. The purpose was to boost Dach’s confidence and keep the top line rolling — another strong move from St. Louis that paid dividends.

The coach will eventually return Dach to centre, but he might keep Dach on the wing for now even if Slafkovsky returns as early as Tuesday, when the Canadiens welcome the Seattle Kraken to the Bell Centre for a game.

If he does, he might still get a secondary offensive kick trying Slafkovsky on the second line while the Suzuki line continues to roll.

• Suzuki’s goal against the Flyers extended his point streak to seven games.

• It’s early, but the Canadiens’ special teams have been excellent through the first nine games of the season. They’ve got the eighth-best power play (25.8 per cent) and the third-best penalty kill (90.3 per cent).

Maybe they’ll dip slightly in both categories.

But so long as the Canadiens don’t drop dramatically in either or both, their chances of remaining “in the mix” increase significantly. Especially if they build on the improvements they made at five-on-five over the weekend.