A five-day break for the Montreal Canadiens didn’t come at the perfect time. The hotter a team is, the more it wants to play. The Canadiens were looking for their first three-game winning streak of the season. They were playing their best hockey of the season.
Not anymore.
The Vegas Golden Knights scored five unanswered goals in the second period to rout the Canadiens 6-2.
Wilde Horses
The only aspect of the night that you can credit the Canadiens for is their desire to not simply put the sticks down and give up for the third period. Obviously, it wasn’t enough to get back into the game in a truly competitive manner, but they decided to be proud, and that’s worth something.
Emil Heineman scored on the power play and Jayden Struble pinched in to score a back-door goal, giving Montreal as many goals in the third as they had shots in the second. A team can’t reclaim how bad they were in the second period, but they can show they found it unacceptable by playing hungry for the final 20 minutes.
When a club isn’t going to make the playoffs, all the minutes have the same value because all the minutes are about learning and not results. That means that the third period had value.
Wilde Goats
Goals against are errors made. When better decisions are made, the puck isn’t in the back of your own net. On the first Vegas goal, Christian Dvorak lost his man, Tomas Hertl. Rather than pick him up late, he chose to slide to block a shot. He failed. 1-0.
Still second period, it was Kirby Dach feeling the pressure along the half-wall when a defender was coming at him. He didn’t want to take the hit and threw the puck into the middle. That led to Callahan Burke with an easy marker. Head Coach Martin St. Louis hated that error so much by Dach that he took him off the top line.
Only 51 seconds later, it was Juraj Slafkovsky at the Vegas blue line and he passed the puck blindly into the middle to set the Golden Knights in motion. It ended up being a two-on-zero that Ivan Barbashev finished off against a helpless Samuel Montembeault. St. Louis hated the Slafkovsky error so much that he put the 20-year-old on the fourth line as punishment.
Three goals in under five minutes by Vegas in the second period. Game over on errors made by players prone to making errors. Good hockey is good decisions, and good decisions are made by experienced players.
Another night of seeing how long it takes to play tight hockey. It takes seasons.
Wilde Cards
After featuring so prominently in the last three years at the World Junior Hockey Championships, it could be that the Montreal Canadiens don’t have a single player in the tournament this Christmas when the world’s best meet in Ottawa.
The Canadiens most eligible player, and ESPN’s best prospect in hockey, is Ivan Demidov, who is from Russia. But Demidov is not allowed to play at the WJC because of the invasion of Ukraine. American Jacob Fowler is not eligible for the event this season. Everyone else in Laval has also graduated.
There is only one hope for the tourney for the Canadiens, and it’s a long shot. Michael Hage hopes to make Canada’s team, but it is likely that he won’t get an invite. He has not been in the mix for Canada getting passed over at the U18 tournament.
Hage hopes to beat out a long list of amazing prospects for Canada: Gavin McKenna, Calum Ritchie, Matthew Wood, Michael Mina, Berkly Catton, Beckett Sennecke, Carson Rehkopf, Porter Martone, Jeff Luchanko, Bradly Nadeau, Brayden Yager, and Easton Cowan are the top-12.
Beating out one of those players is the challenge, but Hage is in the same difficult place as other highly ranked forwards who are also trying to win a spot from those 12. Tij Iginla, Riley Heidt, Liam Greentree, and Andrew Cristall are also not expected to win a spot. Cayden Lindstrom just had back surgery to remove a portion of his lumbar disc, so he will not be available.
It’s going to be a difficult road for Hage, but all he needs is an invite. If he get an invite, the slate is clean and he can win a spot. Hage is certainly earning a look. Hage scored twice, including the game winner with six minutes left, on Friday, to lead Michigan to a 6-5 victory over Penn Sate.
On Saturday night, Hage also shone in another high-scoring affair. Hage had a five point night on one goal and four assists in a 10-6 win for Michigan against the Nittany Lions.
In Hage’s first 11 college hockey games, he has managed better than a point-per-game on eight goals and eight assists. A point-per-game pace in a draft-plus-one season is a fairly reliable marker that that player will have an NHL career.
Hage is looking promising, even if that doesn’t translate to a spot for Canada this year. He is also eligible next year when the tournament moves to Minnesota.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.