Cayden Primeau deserved better.
But even if the Montreal Canadiens’ backup goaltender stole only one point in a 4-3 shootout loss to the New York Islanders on Saturday, he still won something valuable — the confidence of his teammates.
They’d have said it never wavered — even after Primeau was shelled in a 6-4 loss to the Boston Bruins in the second game of the season.
But had the 25-year-old looked the same on Long Island as he did in Boston last week, there’d have been no masking the rising level of concern about his game.
Instead, Primeau put in a performance that had to have reassured the Canadiens, and that was an important development for their season.
We’re talking about a team that needs both its goaltenders to turn miracles most of the time; Montreal hemorrhaged chances through its first five games of the season — the Canadiens came into this one having given up the most per 60 minutes of any team in the league — and extended it to six on Saturday.
Despite starting well, the Canadiens gave Primeau practically no chance on two goals that got by him on the first six shots he faced. And they made his night more difficult from that point forward.
You’d have thought the 3:58 Primeau had to spend tracking the puck in his own zone for a portion of the second period — when Oliver Kapanen broke his stick and the Canadiens couldn’t find a way to break up the Islanders’ possession — would be the hardest task he’d face in the game.
But the Canadiens took three consecutive penalties in the third period and a fourth in overtime that forced Primeau to stand on his head just to keep the puck out of his net.
Eight of the 30 consecutive shots he stopped came on the penalty kill, and then he stopped six of eight attempts in the shootout before Noah Dobson beat him with a perfectly placed laser to end the game.
“Obviously, after my last outing, I wanted to have a strong rebound,” Primeau told reporters in attendance.
He delivered one and served notice he’ll be up to the task in the way he was a season ago, when he managed to deliver points in 12 of 23 appearances despite starting so sporadically and the Canadiens giving up so many chances in front of him.
A good effort, but still lots to be desired on the execution front
The Canadiens battled in this game, erasing two deficits and generating more scoring chances at five-on-five than the Islanders managed.
But they came into it after two bad losses that saw them fail to establish sustained pressure and a functional forecheck and they came out of it having barely nudged the needle in the right direction on those fronts.
The Islanders had nearly triple the amount of time on possession in the game, which was facilitated by the easy zone exits and entries the Canadiens afforded them.
Coach Martin St. Louis said he liked the way his team competed, liked its intentions and its chance suppression, but there’s no way he can like the lack of pressure the Canadiens were able to apply in the most important areas of the ice.
Hey, before they left, St. Louis said he wanted to see them raise their floor. And in many ways, they did on Saturday.
But the Canadiens were nowhere near their ceiling in this one, and that must be concerning — with a third loss in a row suffered and another challenging week ahead.
Also troubling: Most of their top players aren’t playing like their top players, as evidenced by the top two lines once again being handily outplayed by their opposition.
Nick Suzuki’s line with Juraj Slafkovsky and Cole Caufield may have scored a goal at even strength, but it finished with just a 42-per-cent share of the shot attempts and a 47-per-cent portion of the expected goals.
Kirby Dach’s line with Joel Armia and Alex Newhook generated some of the highest quality scoring chances the Canadiens had but didn’t manage well on the quantity front, earning just 40 per cent of the shot-attempt share at five-on-five.
Dach and Armia also accounted for three of six penalties the Canadiens took. Two of them in the offensive zone.
Not good.
The top-six forward group hasn’t been good enough on the whole, which is a big part of the reason the Canadiens are 2-3-1 on their season.
Caufield at least delivering
Six goals in six games for Montreal’s best scorer is a positive that can’t be overlooked. Considering the synergy with Suzuki and Slafkovsky isn’t quite what it should be after the three of them were so simpatico a season ago, Caufield ranking second in the NHL in goals (behind only Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov, who has seven) is a welcome development. Especially since it took him 21 games to get to six last season.
Caufield still scored 28 goals last season, mind you.
But his shooting percentage was under nine per cent when he had previously been at 14 per cent through the first 123 games of his NHL career.
We don’t expect Caufield to remain at 23.5 per cent this season, but we do expect that this early success will inflate his confidence in his shot. And Caufield having more confidence in that weapon makes him a very dangerous player.
He’ll be even more dangerous if his line starts clicking the way it’s supposed to.
Logan Mailloux’s first goal one to remember
He certainly won’t have to embellish the story when he tells it to his kids one day.
Playing in his second NHL game, Mailloux stormed into the slot and completed a pass from Jake Evans by riffling his wrist shot over Semyon Varlamov’s glove and into the net 59 seconds into the middle frame.
What you’ve got to like is the 21-year-old saying he was more disappointed about missing the last shot of the game than he was excited about scoring his first goal on his first shot of the night.
“That’s going to keep me up tonight for sure,” Mailloux said about the shootout attempt he squandered to keep the Canadiens alive in the ninth round.
He made a strong move but just didn’t finish it.
No big deal, but it was a big one to Mailloux.
That competitive spirit will take him far in this league.
Mailloux’s wicked shooting ability will, too.