A tale of two teams to start the season for the Montreal Canadiens. Night one was just about perfect as the Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, but night two was about as abysmal as could be with Montreal barely getting a chance on goal in Detroit.
Usually, by game three, you start to get a better idea who is the real team, and the answer is not rosy. The Capitals were challenged for the first period, but by the third, they were clearly the better team, posting a 3-1 win.
Wilde Horses
The Juraj Slafkovsky draft pick is starting to look better. Logan Cooley was the top three choice at COTW, but it’s impossible to put him in the comparison cross hairs considering he plays at the University of Minnesota. Between the two choices in the NHL, it’s a very early advantage to the Canadiens.
Shane Wright had six minutes in his first game, struggling so much that in his second game he was in the press box. He was also relegated to the press box for the third game of the Kraken on Saturday night in their home opener. Slafkovsky has also seen his ice time drop in his games, but if you look at individual moments, the first choice overall is making some good plays. In this one, in his 13 minutes of play, he did not look out of place.
He’s made some strong up ice passes to free line-mates. He’s seeing the ice well, playing at a higher speed than he saw in Finland. Slafkovsky put himself in the slot to receive a pass and should have scored his first goal of the season, but he didn’t get his shot away as he had hoped. In the third, he carried it through the neutral zone with confidence and won the zone.
The big positive is the game is not passing Slafkovsky by so far. He is implicated in the play and getting his touches. This is all you hope for in the opening moments of an NHL career at 18. It is extremely unrealistic to think a player this young simply arrives and shines.
That doesn’t happen unless it’s Connor McDavid. Even Leon Draisaitl returned to juniors after struggling, and now he is one of the smoothest players in all of hockey.
Slafkovsky should be sent down to Laval eventually to really get a strong look at the puck with a ton of touches and getting on the power play as well.
However, for now, this is fine. He gets a taste. He learns what it is going to take. He isn’t going to be demoralized with these results either. When he goes down, he will be thrilled to find it easier — not easy, but easier. The idea of development is to go where you improve the most. You improve with a lot of ice, a ton of touches, and playing in all situations.
We will debate who should have gone number one for the next five years, but at this moment, on page three of this 400-page book, Slafkovsky could very well be the answer in that debate. For early moments at 18, these are good moments.
Wilde Goats
There are clearly defensive liabilities on the Canadiens, but they are not what one would have expected. The errors that are many are, for the most part, not actually talent errors from the defenders. They are mostly from a lack of diligent work by the forwards in support.
Take the first goal that was scored by Washington where Josh Anderson simply did not work hard enough to neutralize the Capitals attacker with better positioning on the cross-ice pass.
The club is not being beaten on the rush as if the defenders don’t skate well enough to handle their assignments. The defenders are also not being beaten for strength in tight either in the corners.
The big issue isn’t actually the four young defencemen. Take the second goal against where it was the same issue. This time it was Cole Caufield who did not have his check sufficiently covered allowing a shot in tight.
This isn’t to say that the young defenders aren’t having their challenges, but the bigger breakdowns that are leading to goals are the forwards missing assignments.
That’s actually a good thing. These young defenders are going to be fine. They’ll make mistakes, of course, but if they can get some help with more diligent work and responsible work from the forwards, there is no reason to believe this is going to go off the rails with this corps of four rookies.
They’ll benefit naturally from the return of Mike Matheson and Joel Edmundson, but the ice time the rookies are getting is beneficial in the long journey to a much better Canadiens club.
Patience. This is going to be okay.
Wilde Cards
The comparison between Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin is impossible to not make, and if you are a Habs fan, lament.
Both were stars for the Halifax Mooseheads in junior hockey, powering that team to some of the best hockey that fans of the QMJHL have ever seen. Both were destined to be can’t-miss stars. They would both go on to greatness was everyone’s prediction.
MacKinnon just skated around the ice with the Stanley Cup over his head. Drouin watched his team’s first two games from the press box not even good enough to make the line-up of a team that finished last in the previous season.
So what happened?
For me, it is mental. Drouin has lost his belief that he is the player that he was in juniors. He’s lost his confidence that he can be the difference maker during a game — the belief that a player has that if they have the puck, they can get it done.
Many speak of the wrist injuries affecting the shot, and that’s a fair thought, except we don’t even know how many miles per hour the shot has lost when he doesn’t even get off any shots in a game as he is so rarely implicated in the game.
It’s the strangest superstar to fallen star there’s ever been. Usually, you see the hands of time influencing a big drop in production. Here, Drouin is still young. The cliff isn’t supposed to arrive this soon.
The COTW has given Drouin a very long leash and remained optimistic that he could find his game, but it does not look like it is ever coming. If this has to do with anxiety or mental anguish that forced him to step away from the game, then my deepest condolences, because that struggle is real and pervasive.
However, this is also a business, and the Canadiens need to conduct theirs as well. That means it is most likely that this is Drouin’s last season in Montreal, and the organization will have a difficult time getting any asset in exchange for his services at the trading deadline.
It’s also quite possibly his final season in the league.
All of this is a damn shame. When he was on, he was just a beautiful player to watch. I hope he can still reconnect with all of the childhood dreams that he had, because it is not that hard to believe that if his heart were willing, his body would surely follow.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.
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