The Montreal Canadiens were back in town and took to the ice in Brossard; afterward, coach Martin St-Louis answered the burning question.
Freshly back from their west coast road trip, the Montreal Canadiens reconvened this morning in Brossard for a full practice. Given the fact that they’ve been in a different time zone, Martin St-Louis decided to have a later start time at 11:30 AM.
As always, many players turned up earlier. Half an hour before start time, half the lineup was on the second ice, working on various things. Cole Caufield was working on his backhand saucer passes with Adam Nicholas, Mike Matheson, and Noah Dobson were doing simple passing, and Ivan Demidov and Lane Hutson were putting on a show in the offensive zone with some fancy passing. At the other end of the ice, Joe Veleno and Oliver Kapanen were tasked with warming up the goaltenders.
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Just before 11:30, everyone returned to the main ice, where Martin St-Louis was waiting for the players, except Brendan Gallagher and Kirby Dach, who had therapy days. When drills started, Jakub Dobes was at one end of the ice, taking part, while Samuel Montembeault was getting some one-on-one time with the assistant coaches, working on positioning and one-timers.
St-Louis put his players through an intense 45-minute practice, which included some breakaways, odd-man rushes, and two battles on about ¾ of the offensive zone. It was hard not to notice just how easy that exercise was for Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, who by now both seem to have a sixth sense, allowing them to know where the other is.
Montembeault joined the drills 10 minutes after practice had started. At the end of the 45 minutes, Dobes stayed on the ice working with Veleno, Xhekaj, Kapanen, and the coaches, essentially on what the Becaucour native had worked on at the start of practice. Unsurprisingly, after practice, a member of the press asked St-Louis how he would juggle the fact that he had a red-hot goalie while the other was looking forward to getting his marks back, and the coach replied:
Sam’s going to play on Saturday. OK? Can we stop talking about it? Sam didn’t forget how to man the net. There’s a context attached to this. The way Dobes is playing, he’s buying time for Sam to keep working on his game, but I’m not worried. Sam’s going to stop pucks; he’s an excellent goaltender. He’s going to play Saturday after having had a lot of time to work on his game; we might not have been able to do that if Dobes wasn’t at the level he's at now.- St-Louis on who will start the next game in net.
It was pretty apparent that the coach is getting fed up with questions about his goaltenders, but, as he often says about his lineup, the media is being led by what’s unfolding before their eyes. While the Canadiens are playing great this season, everyone is monitoring the goaltending situation closely.
The Quebecer is not bitter about not having many starts; he readily admits that Dobes is having a good start to the season, and he’s happy to have had time to go back to the basics and clear his head. Full marks to him for meeting the media and addressing matters head-on.
With the burning question answered, it will be interesting to see how Montembeault rises to the challenge when he faces the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.
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