The Canadian | To adjust… or not?

The single score of a game is rarely an exact reflection of its overall progress, and the Habs’ 7-3 defeat against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday was a convincing example.

Head coach Martin St-Louis reiterated again, Tuesday morning, that he appreciated the performance of his men, and also that of the next day, which this time ended with a 5-4 victory in overtime.

The goals allowed don’t explain everything, in short… but the Canadian nevertheless allowed 11 in two outings, including six while the club was playing five against five. In either case, this is a serious overtax compared to the trends of previous weeks.

Does the situation require adjustments? It depends who you ask.

For Cole Caufield, everything is beautiful in the best of all possible worlds. The loss against the Leafs is in his opinion an anomaly. “You can lose 1-0 or 12-0, the number of points [au classement] is the same, he said without much passion. We don’t think too much about this kind of thing. We focus on the next match. »

Martin St-Louis appreciated the “behavior” of his troop during the weekend. “The game is the game: there are nights when you play tight, but when you give up more goals,” he philosophized.

Very critical of his work and that of his trio, Patrik Laine for his part recognized “defensive flaws” which resulted in “errors which must be eliminated”.

“We need to help our goalies better by keeping things simple in our zone and erasing stupid mistakes [silly] that we committed in the last match,” he said. In fact, despite the score, his trio struggled more against the Rangers than against the Maple Leafs.

Without qualifying them as harshly as Laine did, we note that the errors were indeed costly in these two meetings. Against the Leafs, we mainly saw risky positioning – a defender venturing too deep into opposing territory or confusion in coverage in the defensive zone, for example. Against Rangers, the unforced errors hurt: two failed clearance attempts led to the visitors’ first two goals. And Chris Kreider scored his team’s fourth goal after being completely abandoned in front of the Montreal net.

Defender Alexandre Carrier confirmed that “tightening [le] play in critical situations” had been on the agenda of the preparatory meetings on Tuesday morning, in preparation for the clash against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the evening. “And the rest will follow,” he predicted.

“I think there were small system errors, a player who forgets his guy,” Carrier continued. A turnaround, there’s not much we can change about that! These are mistakes that will happen, it is neither the first nor the last. »

And to conclude, smiling: “Goals don’t always mean everything. »

It’s a fact. But if the floodgates remain open, the Lightning will, as we can imagine, be happy to take advantage of it.

In brief

Samuel Montembeault will find his net again Tuesday evening. He was the one who was there on December 29, when the Habs won 5-2 in Tampa. He then stopped 21 of the 23 shots aimed at him. We can expect his opposite number to be Andrei Vasilevskiy, since his assistant Jonas Johansson got the start Monday in Toronto, in a 5-3 loss for the Lightning against the Leafs.

A victory in regulation time for the Canadian would bring him to just one point behind the Lightning, who occupy third place in the Atlantic Division. Patrik Laine admitted that he assiduously follows the rankings and the crazy race in the Eastern Association, but that for the moment he is aiming for one of the places reserved for drafted teams. “Let’s take it one step at a time,” he said. It’s great to know that we can play meaningful matches until the end of the season. We feel like every night is a playoff game. »