After a well-deserved two days off, the Montreal Canadiens got back to work on Tuesday night, taking on the Seattle Kraken to wrap up their West Coast road trip. Martin St-Louis elected to give the start to Jakub Dobes, who’s been on five since the beginning of the season and is slowly but surely starting to creep into the Calder Trophy conversation.

After a thrilling win in Vancouver that required quite the comeback, there was little doubt the coach had told his players they needed to play from the start, and they heard him loud and clear.

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The Power Play Is Clicking

The Habs’ power play has improved dramatically since Ivan Demidov was promoted to the first unit, but in the first frame, when the first unit struck, the young Russian wasn’t even involved. Word gets around the NHL quickly when a team has a new game-breaker, and the other teams start paying attention to the Canadiens’ rookie.

If they are putting extra attention on the youngster, it means that other players have more space, and that’s precisely what happened on the second goal of the game. With Demidov under scrutiny, Lane Hutson, Nick Suzuki, and Cole Caufield set up Juraj Slafkovsky’s fifth goal of the season, scored from the slot.

It was the Canadiens’ second goal of the first frame; Caufield had scored the first one. Suzuki had a hand in both goals, ensuring right away that his nine-game point streak kept going.

The Right Mindset

It wasn’t the first time the Canadiens started strong this season, and after they went back to the dressing room with a lead after 20 minutes, Caufield spoke to RDS. Asked what the Canadiens needed to do to turn this lead into a win, the sniper replied: “We just have to stay hungry”.

This is a refreshing answer for the Canadiens’ fanbase. For years in Montreal, the reply would have been: “We have to protect the lead.” Even worse, it wasn’t rare for the Canadiens to look to protect the tie in overtime rather than going for the kill.

That is no longer the case. Sure, there are times when this young team struggles with consistency, but it’s nowhere near as much of a struggle as it was last season. This team is growing organically; it knows what it has to do, and that’s normal, given that, while young, it is still experienced.

It’s not like they went all out on offense in the second frame, but they stuck to the game plan, which was to take what the game was giving them, as the coach would say.

Unfortunately, after the Habs had taken a three-goal lead with another power play goal, the good work stopped in the third frame. Jayden Struble took an ill-advised penalty, which gave the Kraken momentum and ultimately allowed them to come back from behind and tie the game with less than 2 minutes left in regulation. While Struble can be blamed for that foul play, kudos must be given to Brandon Montour. The defenseman is the Canadiens’ kryptonite. Before the game, he had 18 points in 20 games against the Habs, and he got two goals and an assist on the night, taking part in every Kraken goal.

Franchise Record For Caufield

Back in 2019, when Cole Caufield fell to the Canadiens at 15th overall in the draft, fans were overjoyed and rightfully so. In just his fifth full year as a professional, the sniper scored his 11th overtime goal, breaking the franchise record he shared with Max Pacioretty and Howie Morenz. What’s incredible, though, is that the Wisconsin Badgers alums scored those goals in just 298 games. Pacioretty needed 626 to score 10, and Morenz needed 460.  If you're wondering, there was overtime in Morenz's days, the NHL discontinued regular season overtime in November 1942.

Caufield is not just a goal scorer; he’s also a clutch goal scorer. The kind of scorer you should make sure to use when you’re playing for all the marbles, like in the playoffs or in the Olympics, for instance.

On top of scoring the game-winner, Caufield also scored the first goal of the game, meaning he now has nine goals in 11 games. He’s tied for the league lead with Nathan MacKinnon, Jack Hughes, and Pavel Dorofeyev.

He’s become much more than a scorer as well. In the first frame, Lane Hutson was in trouble defensively, having lost the puck by the boards, and it was Caufield who went behind the net to kill the play. He wouldn’t have done that when he was coming out of the NCAA, but he does it now; he’s become a complete hockey player.

The Habs will now fly back to Montreal tomorrow and will have a few days before they host the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night. The near loss tonight allows St-Louis to bring Samuel Montembeault back in net for the next game, against a team he’s beaten three times in the last four duels.

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