TEMPE, Ariz. — Alex Newhook, Josh Anderson and Juraj Slafkovsky have played 42 minutes together at five-on-five through nine Canadiens games and, over that time, they’ve combined for 24 scoring chances—11 of which have come from the high-danger zone—but have yet to combine for a goal.
That needs to change in a hurry.
The Canadiens are 5-2-2 on the season, they’re tied with New Jersey with the eighth-best points percentage in the league (.667), and they’ve managed to do as well despite scoring only three goals per game on average.
The team’s goaltending has been sensational, and its defensive play has been respectable, but those things are going to level off a bit and the offence needs to be more prolific as they do.
It also needs to be more varied.
Cole Caufield and Sean Monahan have scored nine of Montreal’s 27 goals this season. Tanner Pearson and Brendan Gallagher have combined for five from the third line, while fourth liners Jake Evans, Joel Armia and Jesse Ylonen have each scored once.
But Newhook, who has three goals, hasn’t scored since the third game, and his linemates haven’t scored at all.
They could use a bounce, no question. Newhook and Anderson both struck iron multiple times against the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday, and neither of them, nor Slafkovsky, have been particularly lucky since Game 1 in Toronto.
But Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis believes the three of them need something else that starts with the letter B.
“Balance,” St. Louis said after Wednesday’s practice in Tempe.
It was a word he used over and over again during his 15-minute press briefing, and he was mostly saying it in reference to the Newhook line.
Think of the five-side of a die, and St. Louis will tell you that’s what balance looks like in hockey. He believes achieving that look on the ice is optimal but acknowledges it’s not always possible.
But St. Louis still believes balance—properly filling the holes on the ice to create advantages—can just about always be achieved, and it comes down to each individual reading where they are in relation to their four teammates and to the five players opposing them and adjusting their speed to be in the right place at the right time.
He also feels it can be taught, and that’s why he had Newhook’s line go through an extensive video session prior to Wednesday’s practice.
What they took from it, according to Anderson, is the importance of varying speed to properly assess the play and where they should be positioned.
As St. Louis said, “It’s not just physical.”
“Physically, you need your skates to get you to the right place…” he added before saying that it’s what you do mentally that’s most pivotal to ending up where you’re supposed to be.
There are a lot of other mental factors that go into scoring, too, and competition between them can extend a slump.
Slafkovsky might be thinking about how he’s not getting enough shots on net—he has only 10 in nine games, despite playing regularly at five-on-five and being used consistently on the power play. Newhook might be thinking about how his are hitting posts and staying out—he had one shot against Vegas that hit the inside of the right post and then bounced off the left before he also hit one of the bars with one in the shootout. And Anderson might be thinking about how he is tied with Nick Suzuki for the most rush-chances on the team (7) but hasn’t been able to finish any of them.
What St. Louis wants all three of them to be thinking about, however, is how they can work more effectively together to get more of those chances.
“They’re three players with a lot of assets,” he said, “and it’s about finding better balance on the ice in space. As soon as they start with that balance, they’re going to get a lot more shots.”
And with a lot more shots, a lot more goals should be in the offing.
St. Louis believes they can score them, and he said he believes in the line as a whole.
Newhook said he believes in what the coach has identified as the key for his line.
“I think there’s three guys on a line for a reason,” the 22-year-old started. “We were watching video today and just being able to work a little bit better off each other and away from the puck will help a lot. I think we’re pretty close, and Marty having confidence in it, and I think ourselves—we have confidence in the line, too—we know how good we can be. Just have to find that balance.”
It’s essential that happens now, before confidence erodes further for all three players.
Anderson is trying to keep his confidence intact in different ways, first convincing himself the chances he’s getting are going to lead to goals coming in bunches. He has also rewatched all his games, gone shift-by-shift through them with coaches, and he said he would consider watching highlights of goals he’s scored in the past to keep his mind in the right place.
“I do that sometimes,” he said. “I was actually thinking about doing it before the next game.”
Slafkovsky spent an extra 35 minutes on the ice Wednesday, and the 19-year-old will have to lean on his older linemates to help him avoid getting too frustrated off of it.
Newhook knows he has a role to play there to keep Slafkovsky focused on the positives, of which he believes there are a lot.
“I think everyone takes time to figure out who they’re going to be in the league, and he’s doing well,” Newhook said. “He’s really young, 19, hasn’t played a lot of games. But for how young he is, he’s doing very well, and he has the most potential in the world.”
We’ve seen it shine through in certain ways since the first-overall pick in the 2022 Draft began his sophomore season.
It was particularly evident in the way Slafkovsky was reading the play through training camp and through the first six games, and in the way he was finding himself in the right spots more often than not and ending up with the puck on his stick more as a result.
That’s tailed off over the past three games, just as it has for Newhook and Anderson.
But Thursday’s game offers this line an opportunity to change that and, if they take advantage of it, they should finally break through.