Playoff scoring drought spells end of Habs’ run
Summer has come early again for the Canadiens and their fans.
Not as early as last year — when they didn’t even make the playoffs — but too early for a fan base that hasn’t seen a Stanley Cup parade since 1993, and had some high hopes after the Canadiens finished the regular season in first place in the Atlantic Division.
But this season only lasted six games longer than last year as the Canadiens were eliminated with a 3-1 loss to the New York Rangers on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
It was the same old problem for the Canadiens — they simply couldn’t score enough goals.
The Canadiens scored 11 goals in the six games of the Eastern Conference quarter-final series and only four in their four losses. With their season on the line Saturday, the only goal came from defenceman Alexei Emelin, who hadn’t scored since Jan. 14.
There will be a lot of fingerpointing in the coming days and weeks and most of them will be directed at captain Max Pacioretty, who failed to score during the series and had only one assist.
“The chances were there,” Pacioretty said after the game, while coming close to tears. “Their goaltender (Henrik Lundqvist) played great. They definitely are a very strong defensive team, but there were chances there.
“I know where everyone’s going with this and my job is to bury those chances and I take full responsibility for not scoring a goal in this series. But the chances were there.”
Chances don’t count on the scoreboard, though, and Pacioretty isn’t the only one who didn’t bury his on the 28 shots he had in the series, including four Saturday.
Alex Galchenyuk didn’t score, either. Neither did Phillip Danault, who replaced Galchenyuk as the team’s No. 1 centre. Defenceman Shea Weber scored once.
The three forwards GM Marc Bergevin added at the NHL trade deadline — Steve Ott, Dwight King and Andreas Martinsen — didn’t deliver a single point.
Alexander Radulov picked up an assist on Emelin’s goal to finish the series with 2-5-7 totals. But Radulov can become an unrestricted free agent this summer and who knows if he’ll be back next year.
Bergevin believed the Canadiens would have made the playoffs last year if goalie Carey Price hadn’t suffered a season-ending knee injury in November — and he’s probably right. But a team can only ride its goaltender so far and Price was outplayed by Lundqvist in this series. That doesn’t mean Price didn’t play well, finishing with a .933 save percentage and 1.86 goals-against average. Lundqvist was simply better with a .947 save percentage and a 1.70 GAA.
Don’t point the finger at Price for this series loss, unless you’re upset he didn’t score any goals. By the way, Price has only one more season on his contract.
You can point the finger at Bergevin for not giving his star goalie more help offensively after five years as GM. He also hasn’t given Pacioretty a lot of help. It’s amazing the captain was able to score 35 goals in the regular season without a legitimate No. 1 centre.
It has been five years since Bergevin selected Galchenyuk with the No. 3 pick at the NHL draft and the Canadiens still haven’t figured out what to do with him. The 23-year-old can become a restricted free agent this summer and you have to wonder if he has played his last game with the Canadiens, who are surely as frustrated with him as he is with them.
Nathan Beaulieu, the Canadiens’ first-round draft pick in 2011, was made a healthy scratch for Game 6 in favour of Brandon Davidson. Beaulieu also becomes a restricted free agent this summer and if he wasn’t good enough to play in the biggest game of the year, his days in Montreal might also be over.
Surprisingly, Torrey Mitchell — one of the hardest workers on the Canadiens who scored the only goal in a 2-1 loss in Game 3 — was also made a healthy scratch while King stayed on the fourth line and was among the innocent onlookers when Mats Zuccarello scored his second goal of the game.
While Pacioretty didn’t score, he did get in his first fight in three years in the first period when he dropped the gloves with Jimmy Vesey.
Was the captain trying to fire up his teammates?
“No, it just happened,” Pacioretty said. “It wasn’t planned or anything.
“We had a great opportunity to win,” he added. “We went through a lot this year and it definitely feels like a wasted opportunity and some adversity we had to deal with as a team and individually. And hopefully in the long run it makes us better.
“I feel everyone that was on the ice tonight really had no doubt in their mind that we would have won that game and we just didn’t.”
You’re not going to win many games when you only score one goal.
But Canadiens fans are used to that by now.