You won’t find Montreal Canadiens players questioning coach Martin St. Louis for his decision to put them through a bag skate Friday in the aftermath of a second consecutive ugly loss.
“There’s different ways to get a message across. That’s the most blunt way,” Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher told reporters after practice. “There’s not a single guy in here who thought we didn’t deserve it. You go out there, you put your head down, you work and you do it together. Now, it’s time for us to rectify it and move on.”
The Canadiens lost 6-3 in Washington against the Capitals on Thursday. Afterward, St. Louis said: “We puked on ourselves in the third.”
That result came on the heels of an 8-2 home loss against the Seattle Kraken.
Marty’s competitive. He always was as a player, he’s never lost that,” Gallagher said. “We’re honest when we tell you guys we have higher expectations of ourselves. When we’re not meeting those expectations, we have to work to get there. It’s going to take brutal honesty.”
Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki called the bag skate “a message sent.”
“Where we’re at right now, I think it was definitely deserved,” he added.
St. Louis didn’t see it as a desperation move.
“It’s not a last resort. It’s part of the stage we’re in,” he said. “I don’t think there’s last-resort stuff. We’re going through a stage right now and it’s part of it.”
The good news for the Canadiens is that the Atlantic Division standings remain tightly bunched.
Montreal (4-6-1) is in a four-way tie at the bottom of the standings.
St. Louis said he’s not paying attention to the out-of-town scoreboard.
“I can’t look left and right, I have to look inside at what we’re doing,” he said. “Sometimes teams here, teams there will help you, but right now we need to help ourselves.”
The Canadiens are in Pittsburgh on Saturday to face the struggling Penguins on Hockey Night in Canada. Catch the game at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT on Sportsnet or Sportsnet+.