Crushing loss to Coyotes underscores sorry state of Canadiens this season
Twenty games into the NHL season, one thing has become clear: the Canadiens aren’t a very good hockey team.
With an 8-10-2 record, the Canadiens rank 27th out of 31 teams in the overall NHL standings.
After Thursday’s 5-4 loss to the Arizona Coyotes, the Canadiens ranked 28th in offence (average of 2.50 goals per game), 27th in defence (3.40 goals against per game), 26th on the power play (15.3 per cent) and 28th in penaltykilling (74.6 per cent).
As former NFL coach Bill Parcells once said: “You are what your record says you are.”
When the Coyotes — the worst team in the NHL — comes into your own building and scores more than four goals for the first time this season to earn their first regulation-time victory in 21 games, you are not a very good hockey team.
And it could have been worse for the Canadiens if rookie goalie Charlie Lindgren hadn’t stopped three breakaways — including two in the first minute of the third period when the Coyotes were short-handed.
When the Canadiens missed the playoffs two seasons ago, general manager Marc Bergevin blamed it on Carey Price’s season-ending knee injury suffered in late November. Price is injured again, but goaltending is not the problem with the Canadiens now. Even after giving up five goals to the Coyotes, Lindgren still has a 1.99 goals-against average and a .938 save percentage to go along with his 3-2-1 record.
“Unacceptable, embarrassing, that’s what we were tonight,” Canadiens coach Claude Julien said after the loss to the Coyotes.
When asked after Friday’s practice in Brossard what is his biggest concern about the Canadiens a quarter of the way into the season, Julien said: “I think there’s lots of things to work on when it comes to that stuff. Last night, our PK and our power play, our special teams, were terrible. You need to fix that.” No kidding. Apart from the roughly $8.5 million in salary-cap space Bergevin didn’t spend during the off-season and still has at his disposal, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope for the Canadiens moving forward.
An optimist will point out that the Canadiens were 7-3-1 in the 11 games before losing to the Coyotes and that they are only three points out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. A pessimist will note that there are five other teams ahead of the Canadiens in
the chase for the eighth and final playoff spot and that it took 95 points to make the playoffs last season in the Eastern Conference. To reach 95 points, the Canadiens will need 77 points in their last 62 games, which would take a record something like 38-23-1.
There doesn’t appear to be much help on the farm with the AHL’s Laval Rocket.
Before Thursday’s game, the Canadiens called up tough-guy forward Nicolas Deslauriers to add what Julien called “identity” to the struggling fourth line instead of Daniel Carr, who scored two goals in the Rocket’s 5-4 win over the Utica Comets Wednesday night. Carr has 10-6-16 totals in 14 games with the Rocket, while Deslauriers had 3-2-5 totals. Remember, the Canadiens rank 28th in offence.
Deslauriers was given eight shifts and 6:01 of ice time against the Coyotes to create an “identity” on the fourth line and got into an early second-period staged fight with Zac Rinaldo with the Canadiens leading 2-0. The fight totally backfired on the Canadiens, even though Deslauriers won it.
“Second period, we got sloppy after that fight,” Julien said after the game. “Honestly, that gave them the energy and we got sloppy.”
So, what do the Canadiens do now with the young “Flying Englishmen” from Toronto coming to the Bell Centre Saturday night (7 p.m., CBC, SN, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN Radio 690)? The Maple Leafs (13-7-0) have the third-best record in the NHL and the third-best offence, scoring an average of 3.60 goals per game.
“I’m never satisfied, so I keep pushing and pushing to get our team better as we move along here,” Julien said.
“But the bottom line is you can make a lot of progress with the right attitude and a good work ethic. And that’s what I’m trying to get from this team here is that we become more consistent in our work ethic, which we had and our focus yesterday in the first (period), but kind of lost it in the second and in the third. So those are things that we keep trying to harp on players about.”
After Saturday’s game, the Canadiens hit the road next week for games in Dallas on Tuesday night and Nashville on Wednesday. A couple of former Canadiens will definitely be fired up for those games with Alexander Radulov now with the Stars and P.K. Subban with the Predators.
The Canadiens better find answers to their problems pretty soon or they’re going to be looking at missing the playoffs for the second time in three years. They might not be able to use an injury to Carey Price as an excuse this time.