After a good first week to the season, the Habs weren’t able to build on it. Instead, they lost all three of their games while questions remain about the state of their back end after its continued struggles.
The Week That Was
Oct. 14: Penguins 6, Canadiens 3 – After a sluggish start that saw them down 2-0 fairly quickly, the Habs bounced back with three goals of their own including the go-ahead goal from Emil Heineman who scored his second in as many games. Even though Pittsburgh tied it before the end of the second, Montreal was squarely in this game. And then things went off the rails in the third with the defence corps continuing to struggle as the Penguins scored three unanswered to take the win.
Oct. 17: Kings 4, Canadiens 1 – Considering Los Angeles had struggled in the first two games of the Canadian portion of their road trip and didn’t have their starting goalie (Darcy Kuemper) or their top defenceman (Drew Doughty), there was some cause for optimism that Montreal could turn around their struggles against them. Justin Barron opened up the scoring while Samuel Montembeault was sharp (including stopping a Kevin Fiala penalty shot) but beyond that, there weren’t many positives as they couldn’t get much going offensively.
Oct. 19: Islanders 4, Canadiens 3 (SO) – Cayden Primeau got the start for this one and got off to a shaky start, to put it lightly, with two of the first five shots beating him. (He did settle down and played much better after that, at least which played a role in getting a point.) Cole Caufield continued his hot start with a pair of goals including the late tying goal while Logan Mailloux picked up his first career NHL tally as well. However, New York won a nine-round marathon shootout to pick up the extra point.
StatPack
Skaters:
| # | Player | GP | G | A | +/- | PIMS | SOG | ATOI |
| 8 | Mike Matheson | 3 | 0 | 3 | -1 | 0 | 4 | 20:12 |
| 11 | Brendan Gallagher | 3 | 0 | 0 | E | 0 | 7 | 13:12 |
| 13 | Cole Caufield | 3 | 2 | 1 | -2 | 0 | 10 | 18:57 |
| 14 | Nick Suzuki | 3 | 0 | 4 | -3 | 0 | 5 | 20:31 |
| 15 | Alex Newhook | 3 | 0 | 0 | -6 | 0 | 2 | 13:39 |
| 17 | Josh Anderson | 3 | 0 | 1 | E | 0 | 6 | 14:20 |
| 20 | Juraj Slafkovsky | 3 | 1 | 2 | -2 | 0 | 4 | 19:02 |
| 21 | Kaiden Guhle | 2 | 1 | 0 | -1 | 2 | 3 | 21:08 |
| 24 | Logan Mailloux | 1 | 1 | 0 | +1 | 2 | 1 | 19:03 |
| 28 | Christian Dvorak | 3 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 0 | 3 | 13:09 |
| 40 | Joel Armia | 3 | 0 | 0 | -3 | 4 | 6 | 14:19 |
| 48 | Lane Hutson | 3 | 0 | 0 | -4 | 2 | 2 | 26:20 |
| 51 | Emil Heineman | 3 | 1 | 0 | +1 | 0 | 4 | 10:46 |
| 52 | Justin Barron | 3 | 1 | 0 | -1 | 2 | 5 | 19:21 |
| 54 | Jayden Struble | 1 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 14:33 |
| 58 | David Savard | 3 | 0 | 0 | -5 | 0 | 2 | 18:39 |
| 71 | Jake Evans | 3 | 0 | 1 | -1 | 0 | 4 | 16:23 |
| 72 | Arber Xhekaj | 2 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 2 | 3 | 14:25 |
| 77 | Kirby Dach | 3 | 0 | 0 | -6 | 6 | 3 | 15:48 |
| 91 | Oliver Kapanen | 3 | 0 | 0 | E | 0 | 5 | 11:37 |
Goalies:
| # | Player | Record | GAA | SV% | SO |
| 30 | Cayden Primeau | 0-0-1 | 2.77 | .917 | 0 |
| 35 | Samuel Montembeault | 0-2-0 | 4.16 | .867 | 0 |
Shootout – Skaters:
| # | Player | G/ATT |
| 8 | Mike Matheson | 0/1 |
| 13 | Cole Caufield | 0/1 |
| 14 | Nick Suzuki | 0/1 |
| 15 | Alex Newhook | 0/1 |
| 20 | Juraj Slafkovsky | 0/1 |
| 24 | Logan Mailloux | 0/1 |
| 48 | Lane Hutson | 0/1 |
| 51 | Emil Heineman | 1/1 |
| 91 | Oliver Kapanen | 1/1 |
Shootout – Goalies:
| # | Player | SVS/SF |
| 31 | Cayden Primeau | 6/9 |
Team Leaders:
Goals: Cole Caufield (6)
Assists: Slafkovsky/Suzuki (5)
Points: Caufield/Hutson (7)
+/-: Kaiden Guhle (+4)
PIMS: Five tied with (6)
Shots: Cole Caufield (20)
News And Notes
– While Mike Matheson left Thursday’s game with an injury and Kaiden Guhle didn’t, it was Guhle who missed Saturday’s contest with an upper-body injury while Matheson was able to return. Guhle will be evaluated on a daily basis.
– Jayden Struble was cleared to return from the upper-body injury that caused him to miss the first few games of the season. After being a healthy scratch against Los Angeles, he made his season debut versus the Islanders.
– Logan Mailloux was recalled from Laval with some of the injury uncertainty on the back end. The Habs had an open roster spot after Alex Barre-Boulet cleared waivers and was sent down earlier in the week.
Last Game’s Lines:
Caufield – Suzuki – Slafkovsky
Newhook – Dach – Armia
Anderson – Evans – Gallagher
Heineman – Dvorak – Kapanen
Matheson – Barron
Hutson – Mailloux
Struble – Savard
The Week Ahead
Tuesday vs NY Rangers – While many New York fans were hoping for big changes over the summer, the Rangers basically elected to keep the bulk of the team intact from last season, a group that finished first overall in the standings. Heading into Sunday’s action, they’re the only team in the East who hasn’t lost a game in regulation yet. They’re averaging nearly five goals per game with Artemi Panarin leading the NHL in points so far and have the highest team save percentage in the East.
Saturday vs St. Louis – The Blues have been a bit more competitive than some expected coming out of the gate with four wins in their first six games. Offer sheet acquisition Philip Broberg is leading the way offensively with six points while being thrust into a top-four role with the injuries to Torey Krug (season-ending) and Nick Leddy (day-to-day) while Jordan Kyrou is also averaging a point per game early on.
Sunday at Philadelphia – The Flyers are off to a bit of a sluggish start despite Matvei Michkov having a solid first couple of weeks of his NHL career as he’s tied for the team lead in scoring with four points. Goaltending has been a big issue for them with Samuel Ersson’s SV% checking in at just .894 while Ivan Fedotov’s is even worse at .818. Notably, this is the second half of a back-to-back for the Flyers as well although their Saturday matchup is an afternoon contest.
Final Thought
One of the comments I’ve seen a lot of over the first couple of weeks has been the expression of surprise about how the defence is even worse than last season. This doesn’t surprise me. Frankly, I’m surprised that some expected otherwise.
This is a team that moved out two of their better defensive defenders in Jordan Harris and Johnathan Kovacevic over the offseason, replacing them with Lane Hutson and a full-time spot for one of Justin Barron or Arber Xhekaj. Hutson has certainly impressed but he’s a raw rookie who is going to have his ups and downs defensively while Barron and Xhekaj aren’t exactly known for their shift-to-shift defensive consistency let alone game-to-game. If you take away two better defenders and replace them with people who struggle (or are likely to struggle) more in the defensive zone, you shouldn’t be surprised when the back end, you know, struggles more than it did before.
Is part of that systems-based? Probably. The hybrid system they run works well when executed properly but when you have a relatively inexperienced group, they’re going to be likelier to make a mistake somewhere. How Montreal defends is probably better suited for a veteran team with a lot more polish. The Habs still have a pretty young back end overall and not much in the way of polish in their own end.
The unfortunate thing is that this is likely to continue for a while. Yes, there’s reason to hope that as the season progresses, the young blueliners will continue to develop and get better. But the switch isn’t getting flipped overnight and when there’s hopes of integrating more top prospects into the mix (Logan Mailloux and David Reinbacher in the nearer-term, Adam Engstrom and maybe Bogdan Konyushkov a little more down the road), they’re still going to run into the issue of having a young group running a system that’s better utilized by a veteran squad, probably for a few more years.
Is the solution then to switch to a simpler system, one that’s easier to execute but perhaps not quite as effective? I don’t get the sense that’s an option they want to go to so get used to some of the defensive zone issues. They’re probably not going away anytime soon.