Canadiens eager to clean up details, prove management’s faith is well-placed

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Three days after a 7-5 loss to the San Jose Sharks, which came after splitting games with the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals, the Canadiens emerged from the trade deadline the same group that went into it — unchanged in terms of their roster and still searching for the consistency they carried into the Olympic break.

Coach Martin St. Louis didn’t have a problem with general manager Kent Hughes’ lack of trade deadline activity. 

“I feel good,” St. Louis said. “For me, everybody tries to improve, and there’s got to be moves that make sense for the group. But at the end of the day, the most important things you need at this time of the year are details. So, I don’t care who you add, who you subtract; if you don’t have details, it doesn’t matter. So, we’re chasing details.”

They remained elusive after a 6-5 shootout loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Friday.

“We shot ourselves in the foot again tonight,” he said. “That’s becoming the norm a bit. We’re stubborn. Too many turnovers. And against a team with that speed and skill, you pay cash.”

Samuel Montembeault extended his season-long struggle in net, allowing the game’s first shot twice.

The first one, which came 20 seconds in, was repealed after an offside challenge. It was retaken only 19 seconds later, counting this time for Cutter Gauthier.

Through the rest of the night, Montembeault made brilliant saves from in tight to keep the Canadiens within striking distance, but whiffed on the long ones for three of the goals against. 

A fourth got tipped right in front of him with the Canadiens up 5-4 and trying to defend their lead in the final minute of regulation.

That wasn’t on Montembeault, and neither was the loss.

The word Cole Caufield used to describe the Canadiens’ performance? 

“To me, it’s a mindset, it’s not necessarily structure,” the coach said. “When you turn pucks over, there’s no structure that will defend turnovers. So, to me, that’s that. Obviously, closing the game five-on-six, we couldn’t do it again tonight. I’m looking for guys that can do it. And we have a structure, and we got out of the structure today. We gave a free shot to Trouba, and chaos can happen off that. We’re going to keep talking about it, and I’m looking for guys that can do it.”

On Montembeault, St. Louis said, “I think everybody has a part in the goals. It’s not all the goalie. Obviously, his part is magnified, but there’s another five guys in front of him that can do a better job.”

The Canadiens will try to do that for Jakub Dobes on Saturday against the Kings.

They enter the road-trip closing game with a record of 33-18-10, 76 points, in the first wild-card position in the Eastern Conference, one point out of third in the Atlantic Division, with two games in-hand and four points up on the playoff bubble-hugging Columbus Blue Jackets.

Canadiens react to Hughes standing pat at the trade deadline

“I told you guys going in, we really feel confident in our group. If we were to add a player, we obviously would’ve welcomed him in, and it would’ve had an impact. But we feel confident with what we have in here. We’re capable of beating anyone if we do what we’re capable of doing. Our game isn’t in the best place. Fortunately enough, we’ve done a pretty good job of putting ourselves in a good position, but that can change fast. We have a ton of confidence in this group up or down in a game, but for now, we just need to get to correcting some details and getting back to what we’ve done well for most of the year.”

“I feel like Kent and (Canadiens president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton) are two of the best in the league, and we’ve got all the faith in them, and they’ve kind of added throughout the year. Not necessarily today, but they’ve done a good job of filling holes throughout the year, and we believe in our group, and it’s on us now to come together and have a strong final push here and get into the playoffs.”

“I wasn’t all that surprised. You never really know, but I kind of assumed we were not going to make any moves. Luckily, we (kept the group intact), and we’re happy about that. But now we’ve got to pay it forward back to them.”

“I think it’s always a stressful day. You have no idea what’s going on, and you have no idea if it’s the last time you see a teammate or something like that, so you know it’s pretty stressful. I think they believe in our group and what we can do, and that’s up to us to prove them right. It’s just like last year; we didn’t do much, and we found a way. But the lack of details right now is frustrating, and it’s been a couple games in a row, and we’ve got to clean it up. We’ve got a good opportunity to do that tomorrow. We love the group that we have in here, it’s just finding ways to finish it because we put ourselves in a really good spots and this is a result we’ve had to swallow a couple times now.”