Despite a fifth consecutive defeat for his team, Martin St-Louis sees positives in the collective play of his players. However, he still suggested in his press briefing after the 5-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils that the confidence among certain players concerned him.
“People ask me if I’m worried, but the way we’re playing, I’m not worried that things will turn out. I’m a little worried about the confidence of certain players, but that’s OK, we’re going to work on that, but on the collective side, I’m not worried,” said the Canadiens pilot.
He didn’t name anyone specifically, but we can probably remove some players from the equation in light of recent games and the start of the season. Among the players who caught the eye, Alex Newhook stood out on Thursday evening with a haul of two goals, including a magnificent one for his fourth of the campaign. Certainly this evening will help him with his confidence for the next matches.
Brendan Gallagher has been one of the nice surprises since the start of the campaign. He scored in a second consecutive game to reduce the gap to one goal in this clash.
“It’s an evolution, he’s intelligent, he plays within the principles and he understands,” St-Louis said of his attacker.
Sometimes, Martin St-Louis provides colorful expressions to get his message across. Thursday evening, after the defeat, it was also in his shortest answers that we had to pay attention.
The Canadiens’ head coach didn’t come forward openly, but when asked what led to Jonas Siegenthaler’s goal, he didn’t stretch to describe what he thought about this game. As a reminder, the Habs were controlling the disc in Devils territory when they lost possession. When trying to push him away, David Savard tripped on Stefan Noesen’s stick. The Devils found themselves 3-1 in front of Lane Hutson and the sequence eventually allowed Siegenthaler to beat Samuel Montembeault and make it 3-1 Devils.
“They didn’t help us tonight,” St-Louis mentioned without naming who they were talking about, but no doubt he would have liked to have had a penalty on this sequence.
A little later, during the English portion of his press briefing, he followed up on a similar question with this response.
“I feel like we haven’t had a lot of help…I’ll leave it at that. »
The Habs were shut out in two power plays in this match. For their part, the Devils were unable to find the back of the net on three occasions.
