The final stops this weekend on a strong road trip. After wins against the Panthers, Lightning, and Golden Knights, it was supposed to be easier against the Blackhawks in Chicago. However, sports doesn’t always go according to plan.
Montreal had to make sure that they didn’t let down. Playoff spots are not won by teams who don’t beat the teams that they are supposed to, but that’s what happened in a 4-2 Hawks win.
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The Canadiens had a wide shot advantage. Many aspects of their game were strong, but they lacked finish, and that was the difference. The 40 shots translated into only two goals.
The Goals Expected Shot Share was in Montreal’s favour, so there’s not a lot to complain about, but not much to get excited about either considering the heat map meant nothing in the final result.
Cole Caufield counted in the first with a gorgeous goal scorer’s goal. Caufield took the puck from the side of the net, then kept going until he suddenly was all alone in front of the net, then he fired a perfect shot upstairs for his 20th of the season. That’s a 43 goal campaign at present pace.
In the third period, Emil Heineman showed his goal scoring talent again. A puck came off the back dasher high into the air, and Heineman smartly waited it to be waist high where he batted it perfectly out of the air for his tenth of the season.
One of the fine surprises of the season has been not only Heineman’s goal scoring ability, but his complete game. It looks like he is an NHLer and there is no doubt about it for years to come. There’s always a place for a 20 goal scorer who has a 200-foot game in the league. This looks sustainable for Heineman.
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Winning puck battles isn’t about size and strength only. It’s perhaps just as much about balance. It also has an element of clever attached to it. The Canadiens are a perfect team to look at puck battles, and who wins them to understand the science of it.
Fans have only had 40 games to see Lane Hutson, yet they already know that size doesn’t matter when it comes to his puck battles. He angles his body. He distributes his weight. He makes clever adjustments. He wins puck battles. Ask the giant Tage Thompson of the Buffalo Sabres who has nine inches and 60 pounds on Hutson, yet lost to Hutson in an open ice puck battle.
Caufield is another player that if it were about size only, he would not win puck battles, but he wins more than he loses. Again, it’s a matter of balance, positioning, and also smarts.
There are players who are bigger, of course, who do use that size to win puck battles. Joel Armia carries a lot of strength into puck battles, and he wins just about all of them. He is an absolute horse winning his one-on-one confrontations.
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That takes us to Juraj Slafkovsky who has not figured out how to use his size to win puck battles. He’s a giant, and if it were only about size, he would leave the corner with the puck every time.
However, that has not yet happened in Year 3 of his NHL career. Slafkovsky primarily uses his stick to win puck battles. NHL scouts call it a long stick too because his body is so far away from the battle.
Armia knows that when you are big and strong, you get in close quarters, tight to the puck, sometimes actually right over it, trapping it in your skates, and then you begin to make it a physical confrontation. Armia purposely uses his strength and balance to win the battle in close spaces.
This is what Slafkovsky still severely lacks. Being six-foot-three and 225 pounds doesn’t matter when you are only using your stick. Winning a one-on-one confrontation is a complex science with the stick playing a small part only.
When the Canadiens drafted Mike McCarron in the first round in 2013, they felt that he could use his six-foot-six-inch frame to win puck battles to become a second line NHL centre. When the Canadiens gave up on him, the biggest issue was not that he couldn’t skate well enough, but that he could never possess the puck. He never used his huge frame successfully.
Among the masses, the assessment of Slafkovsky mostly starts these days with his goal total, but it really should start with his inability to win the puck. If he would simply make a habit out of that, he could find Nick Suzuki and Caufield to be the effective ‘F1’ that line needs.
He’s 20. Time is on his side, but it’s also about time that he made some progress on this front.
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No one will likely ever know if there might have been some quid pro quo between the Canadiens and St. Petersburg SKA, but something has happened and Ivan Demidov could not be happier about it.
The owner/head coach Roman Rotenberg of Demidov had the Russian on the fourth line or not playing, but after a visit from GM Kent Hughes two weeks ago, suddenly Demidov has moved up the depth chart. In his game on Friday, Demidov was on the first line.
Turns out that if you play 18 minutes instead of five with the best players instead of plumbers, you do better.
Demidov is on fire in the KHL now. He scored twice and added an assist in a 6-3 win. Both goals were spectacular for different reasons.
On the first goal, Demidov took possession at his own blue line. He then absolutely undressed the right side defender. He then weaved through the offensive zone, delaying until he was one-on-one against the goalie who he deked then roofed his shot.
The second goal was off a rebound. The puck went high where Demidov waited smartly for it to descend below the crossbar before he whacked at it. He also smacked down on the puck to increase the chance his attempt stayed on net. Beautiful goal scoring instincts shown.
Demidov added an assist which was also of high quality. He faked shot and sold it to the goalie, then no-look passed it to a wide open teammate. Again, a creative player at his best.
In his last five games, Demidov has nine points on six goals and three assists. He is back on course for one of the greatest draft plus one seasons ever in the KHL. The best is Matvei Michkov with 41 points in 48 games.
Despite many games of five minutes of ice time, Demidov is now 29 points in 39 games this season. He is closing in on the best points-per-game total in league history for a player just drafted.
As a bonus, Demidov is a much better defensive player than Michkov. Michkov has a massive amount to learn defensively. Just ask his Flyers Head Coach John Tortorella in Philadelphia who has benched his young star because he won’t play with energy when defending.
If Demidov gets ice time from here on in, then the KHL has worked out for him. It’s a 68 game season this year and then playoffs start late March. His team is high up the standings, so he could be playing until mid-April and beyond. A 75 game KHL season of high competition prepares Demidov nicely for his arrival in Montreal.
The Canadiens have the best player not in the NHL on his way next season. Hockey experts will repeat for years how stunning it is that he dropped to five in the draft. Demidov will likely be the first Canadiens player since Mats Naslund in 1986 to get 100 points in a season.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.
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