The Canadian struggled to maintain leads last year, maybe things will change a little this season.
• Also read: Evening of 48 stops: take out the celery with Cheez Whiz for Sam
• Also read: Even nervous, Monty dominated
Obviously, a 1-0 victory against the Toronto Maple Leafs in the curtain-raiser is a very small sample size, but it’s a foundation on which to build.
“It’s super important, last year we tried to learn a lot from that,” underlined Martin St-Louis after the meeting. We have to try to close these matches. I liked the first half of our match and then Toronto played with more depth.
“It wasn’t perfect, but we found a way to minimize the damage, we blocked a lot of pucks, Monty was excellent and I liked the commitment of the guys.”
Trust
Who would have said that a goal scored in the first half of the first period would be enough to win against the powerful attack of the Leafs, especially since they had already shot Samuel Montembeault 18 times after only 20 minutes.
“You never know how it’s going to go, especially in the first game of the season. It was difficult because some of us had played little,” noted Nick Suzuki.
According to the captain, it’s the kind of performance that gives energy to the team which is playing a second game in two nights against the Bruins on Thursday.
“It gives us a lot of confidence for tomorrow. I’m sure Boston wasn’t happy with their opening game.”
Number one
Tuesday, Martin St-Louis made a surprising statement indicating that Samuel Montembeault was not necessarily his indisputable number one goalie.
The head coach then mentioned that it was the performance of his goalkeepers that would dictate his decisions.
Maybe this was just a way to whip Montembeault and if so, that’s genius on St. Louis’ part because that’s exactly what happened .
“I wanted to be solid and I want to be solid all season, I want to be consistent. I want to keep them in the game in close games and not give away chances to win.”
Special units
If the shorthanded game was painful during the preparatory matches, the Canadian being unable to score on 30 occasions, he broke the deadlock in the first period when Cole Caufield beat Anthony Stolarz on a powerful shot from the bottom of the faceoff circle.
The Habs, however, only scored once in five occasions, getting only one shot during a double power play lasting 1 minute 33 seconds.
So it still needs work, but Martin St-Louis’ men were very good during the Leafs’ four power plays.
“It’s a team we don’t want to go to the penalty box against. The guys did a lot of work and blocked shots,” underlined Samuel Montembeault.
In fact, his teammates blocked 25 shots. Mike Matheson and David Savard blocked four each.
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