ELMONT, NY | The Canadian has two choices: see the glass half full or half empty.
Saturday, against the Islanders, Martin St-Louis’ men suffered another setback, a third in a row. They have now lost four of their six games this season.
A defeat is a defeat, some will tell you. Basically, it’s true.
But in a process of reconstruction or, at the very least, of “transition towards learning to win”, as St-Louis mentioned in the morning, there are ways of judging a group which goes beyond the two points .
Last Thursday evening, against the Los Angeles Kings, the Habs were dull, without brilliance. He let the Kings leave Montreal with a 4-1 victory, without having to work too hard.
On Saturday, the Islanders can’t say the same.
Yes, Patrick Roy’s men dominated 36-24 in the shots column, but they still needed all their little change – and nine rounds of shootouts – to overcome the Canadian.
“If we had won this match, we would have deserved it,” admitted St-Louis after the match.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the Canadian was better against the Islanders than against the Kings. Not hard to beat, you might say!
“Our fighting spirit was there. Defensively, after two periods, we had given seven chances to score. […] I really liked our departure and the things we’ve been talking about recently. The intentions were there. You lose 2-0, but on the bench, we were very calm.
Good news
When we say that the glass is half full, we must add the fact that the team received two pieces of good news.
In the morning, Martin St-Louis cast doubt on the presence of Mike Matheson and Juraj Slafkovsky but both ultimately took part in the match.
And the presence of Matheson made it possible not to overtax Lane Hutson as was the case Thursday, against the Kings, when Hutson had been on the ice for more than 30 minutes due, in particular, to the fact that Matheson had left the meeting in the first period.
Well, almost. He played a little over 24 minutes, the second highest total for the Canadian, behind Matheson (28 min 10 s).
An endless presence
Of these 24 minutes, almost four occurred during the same presence!
Midway through the second period, Hutson and his partner Logan Mailloux remained bottled up in their territory for more than three minutes alongside Oliver Kapanen, Christian Dvorak and Josh Anderson while the trio of Mathew Barzal, Bo Horvat and Anthony Duclair circled in offensive territory.
The quintet still managed to contain the Islanders’ repeated attacks before finally managing to clear their territory after spending endless minutes on the ice.
Close to four, to be precise: 3 min 58 s for Mailloux, 3 min 51 s for Dvorak while Hutson (3 min 22 s), Kapanen (3 min 43 s) and Anderson (3 min 5 s) must also have felt the effect of lactic acid in their legs when they return to the bench.
“I was exhausted. But the guys fought well. That was the main thing today, we fought. It was exhausting, but I recovered quickly,” admitted goalie Cayden Primeau.
They were receiving solids
He, moreover, was very good.
He gave up twice on the first five shots of the match (two very high quality shots from Bo Horvat and Kyle Palmieri, it must be admitted), to finally finish with 33 saves on 36 shots.
In addition to the 36 shots on target on Primeau, the CH blocked 25 (!), several of which occurred during one of the six penalties taken by the team on Saturday.
David Savard and Mike Matheson blocked five each.
“Savard eats so many pucks, I’ve never seen anything like it. Matheson too. It’s a beast. And it comes down to young people. Barron and I are doing our best,” admitted Jayden Struble, reinserted into the lineup for Arber Xhekaj on Saturday after healing an upper-body injury.
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