After allowing 14 goals in the last two games, just a not-embarrassing game would have been a moral victory for the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night. The Canadiens in Pittsburgh hoping for some revenge after getting blown out 6-3 in October to the Penguins.
They did not get their revenge, falling instead to a 3-1 loss thanks to a pair of goals from Sidney Crosby.
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The heat-zone map for the Canadiens in the offensive zone looked like Nunavut in January. They had only two high quality chances. Lane Hutson hit the post on one and he continues to be stymied looking for that first goal. It feels like he could have had five with some luck.
The Canadiens’ goal was scored by Christian Dvorak who needed it to get some confidence back. It was not even close to enough. They tried hard, but are playing with low confidence that will have to be built back up slowly.
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These are tough times. The team is playing quite poorly as they try to break in four defencemen who don’t have enough NHL experience. These four have bright careers ahead of them, but they don’t have the concepts down enough at the moment.
That’s leading to plenty of mistakes and missed assignments. It has to be said that this team does not look ready for the hybrid system that they are trying defensively.
In the hybrid, they have to switch off between man-on-man to zone depending on the situation. That requires a lot of communication and maturity. It’s not there yet. Perhaps they should help these players to get some confidence back and settle down their games with a system that they can handle better. Makes sense to just switch to zone and let the players feel more at ease.
This was such a low-event game. The Canadiens barely got a chance on goal. Pittsburgh had been porous in their own zone so they wanted to tighten up, and they did so at the expense of the Canadiens, who couldn’t get clear of their checkers at all.
It could be argued that Montreal did not have a single dynamic play in the first 40 minutes. It was that boring. After allowing 14 goals in two games, the Canadiens might have been going for boring, because embarrassing was also not fun.
What to do? What to do? Read below for the Wilde Cards because they are building something that takes patience — and it is going to take a lot it. We are in month 25 of what they hope is a 60-month rebuild.
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Fans and media have grown impatient. That’s a rebuild’s greatest enemy. The management team isn’t going to lose their focus if they are given freedom to do it correctly. However, if fans are booing at the Bell Centre, if talk radio is impatient and the podcasts are nasty, it all could change.
If Hughes is forced to, he will have to trade the future for the present, and that will be lead to being stuck in the middle for another decade in Montreal.
Part of the issue right now is a Canadiens self-own. The management team repeating “in the mix” was not a good idea. Expectations rose. The media ran with it. Predictions (here included) were for strength. However, so much went wrong since they would be “in the mix” was suggested.
What happened instead was every negative possible: Kirby Dach came back tentative, Patrick Laine suffered a major injury, Alex Newhook is not top-six material, the defenders are far too inexperienced, and the goaltending has absolutely collapsed.
Add all those factors, and you see regression. Hughes still has a long leash, though, which is the key to success. As soon as the leash shortens on a GM, he begins trying to save his job with short-term gains that kill long term hope.
That is why the most important word of any rebuild is patience. Some rebuilds take a decade. The Canadiens are hoping for five years to rise out of the ashes. This is only the first month of year three.
Fans and media get the impression that the rebuild is a young adult, but this rebuild is still a child. A perfect example is if you polled fans, they would likely say they’ve had a lot of draft picks, and they should all be making a difference by now. However, the truth is only two picks of the rebuild are even in the NHL — Juraj Slafkovsky and Lane Hutson.
Both of those players are doing extremely well, yet you’ll see complaints that Slafkovsky should be dominating by now. He’s 20!
A popular refrain is for fans to say they just want to see a good game every game, but you can’t be a losing team and lose perfectly — keeping it close and showing promise every single time. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t have perfect losses. Some losses will be painful. That’s the process.
If we are to hope for a 60-month process, then we must remember that we are only on month 25.
All of the 20-22 year old defencemen will peak in six to eight years. They’ll improve before 28, of course, but that’s when they’ll peak.
Consider all of the players picked and the draft picks to come that have not even arrived yet, never mind improved. Two top-15 picks this year alone are likely. It’s three to five years before those picks excel.
Add all of the drafted players who need to arrive and improve: Owen Beck, David Reinbacher, Logan Mailloux, Ivan Demidov, Michael Hage, Jacob Fowler, and many more who could surprise as NHL players like Adam Engstrom and Luke Tuch.
This has a long way to go, and is going extremely well so far. GM Kent Hughes has done an outstanding job of acquiring talent.
Our mandate is to allow the rebuild to grow, so Hughes doesn’t have to make a stupid decision to appease the masses.
What a travesty if angry voices rose up to fire the head coach. Some heat is on Martin St. Louis already before he even gets a chance to work with mature talent who understand how to excel at the NHL level.
It would be a shame if this supremely intelligent and capable management team were not allowed the time to get this done right.
For us, our interests are best served by keeping the expectations low while the best of the best arrive and mature. If we allow them to build it, the wins will come.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.
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