MONTREAL — Nothing like a belly flop from the high board after a world-class diver triple flips his way into the deep end without making a splash.
That’s what we watched at the Bell Centre on Tuesday night, with the modern-day Montreal Canadiens getting trounced by the New York Rangers within minutes of Ken Dryden delivering a speech at centre ice about his dynastic Canadiens being an unbeatable force en route to four straight Stanley Cups to close out the 1970s.
“For years, we almost never lost,” Dryden said, as 14 of the most decorated players in the franchise’s history stood on both sides of him while the current edition of the team stood behind the bench and on the blue line hanging on his every word.
“We needed to win, we loved to win, and we needed and loved to win the way the Montreal Canadiens do — in the best way hockey is played,” Dryden said.
Tough act to follow.
Not that these Canadiens can be expected to follow those ones.
That team from 45 years ago was backstopped by Dryden, a prodigy who had come into his prime by the time it was hoisting its first Stanley Cup. It was anchored by arguably the three greatest defencemen to ever play for the organization — Larry Robinson, Serge Savard and Guy Lapointe — and carried offensively by Hall of Famers Guy Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire and Steve Shutt. Not to mention the contributions of Bob Gainey, for whom the Selke Trophy was created, and Doug Jarvis, who helped make the Canadiens a nightmare to play against.
The current team, which is under no illusions about where it stands in Canadiens history, is in the early stages of Year 3 of a rebuild. It may believe it has gained enough experience through the first two years to take a step forward, but certainly isn’t delusional enough to think a leap onto the sport’s highest pedestal is immediately in the offing.
Still, the sting of reality hit early Tuesday night. It was inescapable as this Canadiens team was starting the game with three of its best players in Kaiden Guhle, Juraj Slafkovsky and Patrik Laine all sidelined by injury. It was biting the Canadiens as two defencemen with a combined 10 NHL games — and a third who had 47 under his belt prior to this one— were getting spun through the cyclone of the high-powered Rangers offence.
It was 3-0 for the visitors 6:40 into Period 1.
“It’s hard to win a game when you give up a field goal before the first TV timeout,” quipped Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis afterwards.
He, and they, felt the Canadiens could recover from a great play in transition that gave Mika Zibanejad the opening goal. Especially after dominating the Rangers for the majority of those first 54 seconds.
But they knew it was going to be tough sledding when Logan Mailloux (two NHL games) and Jayden Struble (47) stopped skating on a play they thought would be whistled dead for icing.
Those two allowed a free shot to Jonny Brodzinski from just outside Samuel Montembeault’s crease right then and there, just 1:06 after the Zibanejad goal.
The Canadiens knew it was going to be a flat-out slog through the mud when Lane Hutson (eight NHL games) got pickpocketed in the neutral zone while trying to make a move with the puck as the last man back just 4:35 later.
At least they didn’t give up when they went down 4-0 shortly after the second TV timeout.
Still, a 7-2 loss at home hurts. Especially in front of the great Canadiens of the 1970s.
“Obviously they’ve done so many good things — that dynasty, that team — and obviously we wanted to show something better for them,” said David Savard, the team’s elder statesman, who turned 34 on Tuesday.
He admitted it was frustrating the Canadiens couldn’t; that they couldn’t reach the standard they feel they need to play at to achieve their goal of remaining “in the mix” for a playoff spot.
The Canadiens were so fixated on the result, they botched the process.
It’s been a theme so far, with four losses in a row as evidence and St. Louis admitting the Canadiens have “at times” fallen into that exact trap.
Since the start of training camp, all they’ve talked about is playing at a higher level than they’ve displayed over the last two seasons. Since the start of this season, they haven’t been able to do it.
That’s been sobering.
“We’ve still got a lot of young guys. Young guys that haven’t played too much in the NHL, especially against a team like that that’s really well-built,” said captain Nick Suzuki, who scored both goals for the Canadiens.
“We have high expectations for ourselves, and I think we can’t drop those high expectations,” Suzuki continued.
“We want to just keep building,” he said before referring to this game as “definitely a low point of this season” the Canadiens need to pick themselves up from.
It’s going to be hard, and not just because they’re now down another man in Justin Barron, who was playing some reasonably good hockey before taking a violent hit from Jacob Trouba that left him woozy and unable to complete the game.
The Canadiens have a lot of kinks to sort out, both collectively and individually, and that was reinforced to them on Tuesday.
They must learn from the experience.
“Tonight is one of those nights where we got humbled a little bit in what we’re actually trying to look like,” said St. Louis. “We might not be there yet, but we’re going to work our way to get to that where hopefully we’re humbling teams.”
They won’t do it like the dynastic Canadiens, who lost just eight of 80 games in 1976-77 before losing just two of 14 in the playoffs.
But hey, nobody ever will again.