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Canadiens’ commitment to aggressive defence pays dividends
MONTREAL — It’s in the 47th minute of play that Lane Hutson identifies a two-on-two rush coming at him and gaps up on St. Louis Blues forward Oskar Sundqvist.
His in-your-face presence on Sundqvist forces a chip-in that he immediately cuts off, enabling him to quickly transition the puck to Nick Suzuki, who sends Cole Caufield up the ice for a rush chance that’s buried for a 4-2 lead.
This simple play from Hutson is the definitive one on Redemption Night in Canada for the Montreal Canadiens. It is the best example of what changed between Tuesday’s 7-2 shellacking at the hands of the New York Rangers and Saturday’s 5-2 win over the Blues — a full weight shift from heels to toes that mercifully stopped a losing streak at four games.
“I felt we were harder to play against,” said Martin St. Louis afterwards.
The Canadiens couldn’t have been easier to play against for the Rangers, so the coach spent the three days between games trying to break his team’s habit of playing passively without the puck.
St. Louis wanted them to gap up and kill plays before they got deep into the defensive zone, and they ritually did exactly that against the Blues.
When the Canadiens couldn’t curb the danger at their own blue line, they quickly identified the next best opportunity to break up the Blues’ offensive flow and pounced on it.
“Against the Rangers, we had zero defensive pace, so you don’t take early actions with pace,” St. Louis said. “Everyone was like, ‘Who’s got who?’ So, when you bring pace with some early actions, it’s very clear that we’re harder to play against.”
Those early actions came all over the ice against the Blues, starting on the very first shift of the game — a dominant one from Jake Evans, Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson, featuring pace, pressure and effective forechecking that kept the puck 200 feet away from the Canadiens’ net for 47 straight seconds.
Less than eight minutes later — after several aggressive shifts from the Canadiens, after an outstanding penalty kill, and right after a strong defensive play by Mike Matheson to regain possession behind Montreal’s net — Evans opened the scoring with a perfect shot.
Kirby Dach notched one of his own, scoring his first goal of the season 1:12 into the second period.
And after the Blues scored two quick ones from Colton Parayko and Jake Neighbours, Alex Newhook scored the first of three unanswered Canadiens goals.
Dach and Newhook played strong games. Almost all the Canadiens did — from Arber Xhekaj, who was challenged by St. Louis to be a better version of himself against the Blues after sitting out games against the Rangers and New York Islanders, to Hutson, who recovered brilliantly from the most challenging of his 10 games to date in the world’s best hockey league.
On the play he made before Caufield put this one out of reach for the Blues, Hutson said, “The best defence happens early.”
Wise words from a 20-year-old rookie.
Even if he borrowed them from his coach.
St. Louis was hammering home this message over the 72 hours leading up to puck drop on Saturday. He said he was confident it would sink in for the Canadiens and that they would offer a much better performance.
They did.
The Canadiens weren’t perfect at the Bell Centre, but they gave themselves a much better chance to win than they had at any other point over the last two weeks.
“Hard work, sticking together — those were the two main things,” Evans said about what went into the win. “Obviously the practices the last two days have been setting the tone for how we’ve gotta play and I think all those things (the Canadiens worked on) really got us to deserve this win tonight.”
That feeling was just as relevant to the Canadiens as the two points in the standings that brought their record to 3-4-1 on the season.
They needed a performance that could serve as a template for how they want approach their games, and they got one.
“I felt there was less space,” St. Louis said. “When there was some space, there was pressure into that space right away and we were making reads off one another.”
That was the case at both ends of the ice against the Blues, and it must be the case against the Flyers in Philadelphia Sunday.
Whether the Canadiens win that game or not, committing to that aggressive, stifling style in all their games will give them a much better chance at success than the stuff they did through their first seven games.
