Christian Dvorak won a puck battle behind his own net, wedged the puck off the wall and fired it right into the slot for Jakub Vrana to make it 3-2 Washington Capitals in what turned out to be a 6-3 loss for the Montreal Canadiens.
Tough play.
One of several the Canadiens made to continue the same troublesome pattern that’s plagued their early season.
“We have to stop helping the other team,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said roughly 13 hours after his team gave the Seattle Kraken an 8-2 win at the Bell Centre on Tuesday.
After Thursday’s loss in Washington, he had to be perplexed at how the Canadiens turned a reasonably tight-checking, responsible road game into a mess after Nick Suzuki erased Dvorak’s mishap with his fourth goal of the season to make it 3-3 with two minutes to go in the second period.
They didn’t just help the Capitals get to 7-2-0 on their season, they practically did it for them — carelessly mismanaging the puck all over the ice before having to fish it out of their net three more times.
“We had the first we wanted. In the second, nothing was perfect, mistakes were made by both sides,” St. Louis said in French to reporters at Capital One Arena before adding, “Then we puked on ourselves in the third.”
Spitting up first was Cole Caufield, who gave the Canadiens life earlier in the game with his 10th goal of the season before helping to extinguish it 4:21 into the third period. He committed one of 24 turnovers his team was credited for in the game trying to stretch the ice to Suzuki, and then he tried to tip a Washington shot out of harm’s way but ended up tipping it into goaltender Cayden Primeau.
Connor McMichael — Caufield’s man on the play — was left alone to collect the rebound and make it 4-3 Capitals.
Just 36 seconds later, Montreal gave up a two-on-one rush, which ended with Canadiens defenceman Jayden Struble tipping one right past Primeau and into the net for 5-3.
Speaking of the numbers 5 and 3, despite the glaring mistakes the Canadiens made to put themselves down by two goals, they got a 1:35 two-man advantage to get back into the game with over 10 minutes remaining.
It ended poorly.
Cole Caufield and Joel Armia both whiffed on their best opportunities, sucking most of the wind right out of the Canadiens before Alex Ovechkin took what remained of it by scoring to get within 37 goals of Wayne Gretzky’s record as the greatest goal scorer in NHL history.
“It seems our confidence isn’t there at the moment,” said Canadiens defenceman Mike Matheson.
It’s only natural it’s fleeting, with good intentions regularly undone by costly mental lapses.
“The effort is there,” said Matheson. “It’s not like we’re just heading to the hotel and we don’t care and we’re just going to forget about the game. We all want to take the next step, but this is for sure frustrating.”
It’s all a part of being the second-youngest team in the NHL, which St. Louis acknowledged before the Canadiens departed for Washington.
It’s not an excuse. It’s reality.
St. Louis can’t alter that, but he must deal with it.
So must the veterans on the Canadiens, like Dvorak and Caufield, and even Jake Evans, Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson.
Those last three have been so reliable since the start of the season, but they were like the rest of their teammates in that third period — far too generous to the Capitals. Hence they were a combined minus-6 on the night.
“We’re going through some things right now (as a team), and the frustrating thing is it’s repeating mistakes by all of us,” said Gallagher. “As individuals, we need to be more accountable to the team. We felt like we handed it to (the Capitals). They worked — give them credit — but we’re just disappointed by the mistakes we made on our end.”
Dwelling on them obviously won’t solve anything.
“I think it’s very important to not be too negative and make sure it doesn’t take all your energy,” Matheson said. “You’ll be frustrated, and it’ll be hard to sleep, but we have to be ready to work tomorrow and reset tomorrow for a new game.”
We’ll see if the scars heal before the Canadiens take the ice against the Penguins in Pittsburgh on Saturday.
They’re running deep right now, with a 4-6-1 record to show for it.