EDMONTON — Montreal Canadiens assistant coach Trevor Letowski was saying Tuesday morning before facing the Edmonton Oilers how difficult it was to plan matchups on the road against this team because of how often the Oilers will randomly throw Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl out on the ice together, somewhat out of nowhere.
“The thing is on the road against a team like this, we know he will spot those two together at times, they played a number of minutes last game,” Letowski said. “We don’t know what’s coming. It’s very hard to predict if they’re going to play together or not. So it’s hard to get a clean, hard matchup the way that he manages those players. The focus will be more on the way that we play tonight.”
Letowski, however, got a lot of information right off the starting lineups, before the puck was even dropped to start the game.
After Letowski started Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovský, Mike Matheson and Kaiden Guhle, Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch countered with Adam Henrique, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Derek Ryan, his shutdown line, along with Brett Kulak and Cody Ceci on defence.
Most notably, McDavid was not on the ice.
So, the Canadiens immediately pulled Matheson and Guhle off the ice right after the faceoff but kept the Suzuki line out there. From that point on, the Canadiens knew that if they sent the Suzuki line over the boards, McDavid was not likely to be coming on the other side because Knoblauch — who noted Tuesday morning just how dangerous the Suzuki line has been for the Canadiens — wanted his shutdown forward line to face them.
As a result, Matheson and Guhle hardly ever played with the Suzuki line at five-on-five, because the matchup the Canadiens wanted was to have Matheson and the local kid Guhle — playing in front of so many friends and family he couldn’t even remember how many tickets he bought for the game — against the best player in the world, McDavid.
Two things should jump out based on this information alone. First, the Canadiens’ top line, made up entirely of young core elements, has reached a stage where the coach of the most potent offensive player of this generation feels the need to have that player’s usage somewhat dictated by when Suzuki was sent over the boards. McDavid and Suzuki only spent 1:42 on the ice together at five-on-five.
Second, Guhle continues to show what he will be as an NHL shutdown defender. Yes, he was victimized by McDavid on the Oilers’ first goal, an opportunity created by a terrible Josh Anderson turnover in his own zone, but Guhle spent a team-high 12:28 on the ice with McDavid at five-on-five and while the Oilers heavily controlled the run of play in that time, ultimately that first-period goal was the only one the Canadiens gave up in that time.
And because McDavid was more or less neutralized, the rest of the Canadiens’ lineup was able to slowly gain an advantage against the rest of the Oilers lineup. Penalties cost the Canadiens in the end — including a tough 4-minute high-sticking call on Joel Armia after he was hit by Evander Kane and his stick came up on Henrique with 20 seconds left in regulation — and led to the Oilers winning the game 3-2 in overtime just 15 seconds before the second Armia minor was set to expire.
But the game, not the result, told a positive story for the Canadiens because of who was at the heart of a strong performance. It was Suzuki and Caufield and Slafkovský and Guhle and Alex Newhook and Joshua Roy, among others. Suzuki is the oldest of that group at age 24, and it is important for those players to feel like they are a part of something positive, which is how this game was viewed by their (temporary) coach.
“It’s one of the best games I think we’ve played all year,” Letowski said. “There’s a lot of positives, I’m not going to sit here and be negative about it.”
On aurait mérité 2 points, mais on repart avec 1
Deserved 2, leaving with 1#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/w5McbroAiw
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) March 20, 2024
But sometimes, it is difficult for players to see those positives when they are dealing with yet another loss against a league power where you probably deserved better. In their last nine games, the Canadiens lost in a shootout to the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning on the road; in the last seven minutes of regulation to the Toronto Maple Leafs at home; in overtime at home to the Boston Bruins; and now in overtime on the road to the Oilers.
Before the game, Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse had just come off the ice after an optional morning skate when he was asked about the process of coming out of a rebuild, how you grow as a group while losing games regularly, how you can see a bright future amid a miserable present.
The Oilers’ current core was largely in place during Nurse’s rookie season in 2015-16, but it was extremely young, and wins were hard to come by despite the obvious level of talent in the room.
“Yeah, there were long stretches where you just feel like you’re going to be a bad team for a long time,” Nurse said. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to know when you look around, there’s so much talent in this league, but for the Canadiens, they have young guys who are bound to have long careers, and I think that’s something we had to realize when we were going through those tough stretches.”
Because amid the losing, that perspective can be difficult. And that’s because every single one of these players, from the superstars to the fourth-liners, is wired to win.
“The biggest thing that I think gets forgotten is that everyone’s competitive in this league, you don’t get to this league without being hungry to win, whether it’s on an individual level, team level, to get to this point guys have had a lot of success in their careers,” Nurse said. “When you’re going through the thick of it and the losing streaks and when you’re at this time of year and you’re out of the playoffs, it’s tough to find the motivation sometimes. But everyone’s proud and has taken long to get to this level.
“At some point it all pans out, and going through the highs and lows is part of the process.”
This loss to the Oilers stung for the Canadiens. They fought as hard as they could. Brendan Gallagher blocked a Mattias Ekholm shot with his left hand, the same hand he has already broken twice, a hand that was wrapped in ice after the game. Roy blocked an Evan Bouchard shot in the final minutes of regulation. The Canadiens did everything they could to overcome a talent deficit by adhering to their game plan and competing hard, and while they got yet another point out of it for reaching overtime, at some point consolation points start getting tiresome.
But after the game, a frustrated Suzuki was asked about what Nurse said before the game, about how difficult it can be to see the forest for the trees when you are losing all the time.
And he insists he sees that forest.
“I think we all see it,” Suzuki said. “We’re all excited for what we have as a group. We all care for each other in here, too, which goes a long way. We’ve got a lot of young players who are really good and talented who are coming.
“It’s tough to go through losing and everything that comes along with it, but I think we can always look on the bright side.”
The bright side in this case was that Suzuki’s usage helped determine McDavid’s usage, and that predictability allowed the Canadiens to get Guhle out against McDavid as often as they did.
Suzuki, Caufield, Slafkovský and Guhle represent a good chunk of the Canadiens’ core, they are in place, and even if they are losing games right now, games like the one Tuesday in Edmonton suggest that losing will not last very long.
(Photo of Kaiden Guhle checking Zach Hyman: Lawrence Scott/Getty Images)
