The day after their humiliating 6-3 loss against the Washington Capitals, the Canadian players skated.
A lot.
At the end of the training session Friday in Washington, CH head coach Martin St-Louis reserved for his flock an exercise that was intended to be punitive. Without a puck on the blade of their sticks, they were forced to go back and forth between the goal line and the middle of the ice.
“In life, everything has an expiration date… Patience too,” explained St-Louis regarding the message sent to his squad.
“Winning is not my priority today. My priority is to change habits on the ice and the state of mind,” added the coach, identifying the play of his team in its own territory, and the blunders that are repeatedly made there, such as more pressing to correct.
“Defensively, we have habits and a state of mind that lack urgency. What creates urgency, in my opinion, is always a deadline. You start a season and you have 80 some games. THE deadline may seem far away, but it is close. The exam is during the next match. You have to do your homework, you can’t procrastinate hoping that you will be successful if you don’t have a sense of urgency. »
After catching their breath, the few players who met the journalists as they left the ice rink swore that the team had learned its lesson.
“He has every right to be angry,” veteran Josh Anderson observed.
“Message received. If we continue to play like this, practices will continue to be like this. This is completely understandable. We have to turn the page and start winning hockey games. Losing is not fun and we’re all pretty tired. And it’s the guys in this locker room who can do something about it,” Anderson preached on the eve of the game against the Penguins in Pittsburgh.
“There are many ways to send a message, and this is the most brutal. There is not a single player here who thinks we did not deserve this training,” commented Brendan Gallagher.
“We are no longer the team we were two years ago, we are no longer at the same stage,” added captain Nick Suzuki. There are a lot of expectations and pressure to perform. We are far from that at the moment and we had to have a practice like that. »
