Habs coach frustrated by team’s play
“I’m frustrated as hell.”
That was coach Claude Julien’s state of mind Thursday night after the Canadiens’ losing streak reached six games with a 6-4 defeat at the hands of the New Jersey Devils.
Julien offered a litany of reasons for the current slide, but they all came to the same thing — a failure to play sound defence.
“We made mental errors,” Julien said. “They’re not the things we’re teaching. There are guys who are trying to do too much, When you get almost 50 shots and score four goals, you should win. But we had too many breakdowns. There were guys picking up the wrong players, bad line changes.”
The Canadiens don’t have much time to turn things around, They are back on the ice at the Bell Centre Saturday afternoon to face the Philadelphia Flyers and then they travel to Boston Sunday to play the Bruins, a team that handed them an 8-1 pasting on Tuesday.
Julien said the main task at practice on Friday was to “get our players in the right frame of mind.” He noted that the Canadiens didn’t play perfect defence in their first 20 games, but they weren’t as bad as they are now and some of the results were skewed by a penalty-kill that has been among the worst in the NHL all season.
The penalty-kill was a perfect 3-for-3 Thursday, but the Canadiens might as well have been playing short-handed because they gave up three goals on oddman rushes and a fourth was scored on a breakaway.
That didn’t make for an easy night for goaltender Carey
Price, who gave up five goals on 34 shots. We can’t tell you how he reacted to the loss because he declined a request for post-game interviews, although he shouted an expletive as he exited to the locker room through a back door.
Price has given up 16 goals in his last three starts and his season record dropped to 10-8-3 with a 3.29 goals-against average and an .897 save percentage.
Brendan Gallagher, who scored his 10th goal, said it was wrong to blame Price for the loss.
“We know how good he is, it’s not his fault,” Gallagher said. “We make the mistakes. We can’t give up those high-danger chances. He’ll make the saves he’s supposed to make and he’ll save some he shouldn’t make.”
Gallagher, who is the conscience of this team, said he and his teammates have to view the losing streak as an opportunity.
“Everything you go through in this game is an opportunity to improve as an individual and as a team.” Gallagher said. “And that’s what we have is an opportunity to play our way out of this. We have no other choice. We have to do it as players. The coaches are doing everything they can, they’re not on the ice making mistakes.”
Brett Kulak, who was available after the game, returned to the lineup after two games as a healthy scratch and he struggled. He was a minus-3 in 11:48 of ice time.
“We’ve had stretches where we’ve been really good and everything’s clicking and we’re just solid and shutting down everything,” Kulak said. “Right now’s a time where we’re giving up too many goals to win games. We know that’s what we’re lacking right now is a defensive core. We just got to get back and start working hard.”
“I think it’s just you’re coming in and you think you have all the control in the world with the puck going offensively and then boom, something happens,” Kulak said when asked about the 2-on-1 breaks. “They were catching us a couple of times. They were flying the zone and there was just little things like that. Yeah, they were getting lots of odd-man rushes tonight.”
“We made mental errors. They’re not the things we’re teaching.” Claude Julien Canadiens head coach