Canadiens’ confidence bolstered by desperate late-season playoff push
Montreal is on the cusp of a playoff spot. And when the Canadiens were floundering in October, they never lost faith they’d find themselves where they are in April.
MONTREAL — You’ve got to believe.
The Montreal Canadiens do. It’s one of the only reasons they escaped the first period of their game against the Detroit Red Wings Tuesday with a prayer of winning for a sixth straight time and pushing their lead in the second wild-card position to eight points over all their pursuers.
Samuel Montembeault was the only other reason. The Canadiens’ goaltender stopped 23 of 24 shots through those first 20 minutes, while the guys in front of him were trying to catch their balance after staggering out to play their fifth game in eight nights—and this one against a Red Wings team playing with its season practically on the brink.
Montembeault steadied them.
Then the Canadiens leaned on their collective game to out-shoot the Wings 17-13 and out-score them 4-0 over those last 40 minutes.
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“Our collective game is so strong,” said coach Martin St. Louis after. “You have individual moments within a game, but our collective game is hard to play against when our five guys do what they’re supposed to do. And sometimes you’re far from the puck, but we know where you’re going and what your job is. I know I’ve said, ‘What’s next?’ 150 times, but what’s next? You know your job, you know where the puck is going, you know where you have to be and where your teammates and the opponents are going to be offensively and defensively. I think when we do that, we’re hard to play against.”
The Canadiens were relatively easy to play against for the desperate Wings at the start of this game, largely because they were exhausted.
But they defended hard and stuck together, and they believed they could pull this one out when it appeared as though they’d have no chance of doing so.
That’s what they’ve done this season, as a team that shot out to a league-worst 5-10-2 record and found the resolve to put up the 11th-best points percentage in their 61 games since.
When the Canadiens were floundering in October, they never lost faith they’d find themselves where they currently are in April.
“I think you just go back to last year, there was a lot of close games, a lot of one-goal games, and obviously our record didn’t look great and didn’t feel great, but we didn’t feel like we were out of it really in any game we played,” said Kaiden Guhle. “We played a lot of really good teams last year and kept a lot of games really close, and we just knew it was about time. We kept chugging along and kept doing what we had to do as a team and as a unit, and I think we all just kind of knew this was going to click and going to happen.”
Guhle said that belief grew after the Christmas break, when the Canadiens rattled off wins over Florida, Tampa, Las Vegas and Colorado on a grueling five-game trip that saw them lose a game they dominated in Chicago.
That belief was clearly affirmed coming out of the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off, with the Canadiens winning five of their first six games en route to building 14-4-4 record through Tuesday’s contest.
Now, here they are, on the precipice of clinching their first playoff berth since embarking on the rebuild that began just months after their appearance in the 2021 Stanley Cup Final.
You might consider the Canadiens ahead of schedule, kind of like Ivan Demidov, who will join them this week instead of at the end of May.
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But they don’t consider themselves ahead of schedule.
As Mike Matheson put it, their unwillingness to sit back and just accept it should take longer for them to be in this position put them there right when they hoped to arrive.
“I think we realized that, whether you’re a young or an older guy, you only get so many years to play in this league and you can’t kind of expect or (hope) the team will be good in a few years and think you’re part of that solution if you’re not the one driving it to the end goal,” said Matheson. “We had a bunch of talks about that the last couple of years, and I think everybody dug in and wanted to be part of the solution.”
With that, an identity was carved out, and the Canadiens have largely played to it — even when it’s looked like they wouldn’t be able to.
And with four games left, the Canadiens are going to lean into that identity, and not just in an attempt to put an end to the race for the second wild-card spot in the East.
“I always say to the guys that when I go running outside, I’m not looking behind me to see if someone’s going to catch me,” said St. Louis. “I’m looking at the guy in front of me to see if I can catch him. I don’t know if I’ll pass him, but I’ll always try. That’s how you should do anything in life—always look forward. You can’t be scared of getting caught. Are you able to go further? If you’re just happy to stay in front of the guy behind you, I don’t think you truly maximize your potential. You’re just comfortable to be in front of the guy behind you. You’re better off being hungry enough to catch the guy in front of you.”
The Canadiens can get closer to the team directly in front of them Friday.
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That’s when they’ll play the Ottawa Senators, who clinched their playoff spot in a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets Tuesday and are just three points ahead of the Canadiens in the first wild-card spot.
They may not be able to pass the Senators, but they’ve beaten them in all three games this season and believe they can do it once more.
First, the Canadiens will take a breath.
“We need a rest,” said St. Louis. “I think rest at this time of the season is a weapon. We have to use it… (Wednesday) is a well-earned day off and a very important one.”
It should allow the Canadiens to redeem the energy to finish strong and keep pushing themselves as far as they believe they can go.
