Captain Nick Suzuki returned to the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night, and while the Habs kept a 5-0-1 record in his absence, they didn’t play as well as their record suggested. Many of those wins came thanks to fantastic goaltending, and on Tuesday that wasn’t enough as the Sainte-Flanelle suffered an historic collapse, going from leading 4-0 with 2:40 to go in the third to losing 5-4 in overtime. The Bleu, Blanc, Rouge hoped to make its fans forget that in earnest as they hosted the Utah Mammoth. It was one last home game before heading to Toronto for a Saturday night tilt with the Leafs and Carey Price’s Hockey Hall of Fame induction.

Jakub Dobes was back in net after Jacob Fowler was credited with the loss on Tuesday night despite making 42 saves. The Czech netminder won his last game 5-2 against the Dallas Stars a week ago and hoped to build momentum with a second win in as many starts, which he did, this time in extra time, by a score of 5-4.

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The Canadiens looked completely frazzled early on, kept giving the puck away, and fell behind by two goals in 10 minutes. Both times, Logan Cooley eluded the defense and walked in all alone on Dobes. He made Adam Engstrom look bad on the first goal, then slid between Alexandre Carrier and Kaiden Guhle for a power-play breakaway and sealed it by beating Dobes five-hole.

Having seen the player selected third overall behind him in the 2022 draft score twice, Juraj Slafkovsky made a solid play to set up the Canadiens’ first goal. He drew three players to himself before sending Suzuki a perfect feed on the doorstep; the captain wasn’t going to miss that kind of opportunity. On that play, the big Slovak showed tenacity, using the fact that he’s hard to move off the puck. Those are great qualities to have, and he needs to use them more often.

From then on, Slafkovsky played a very good game on a first line that shone brightly. The Habs had 35 shots on net, and 14 of them came from the first line, including four from the former first-overall pick. Did it give him extra motivation to see Cooley play as well as he did? He told us it didn’t; he plays for the Montreal Canadiens, and it doesn’t matter who he’s playing against.

When Martin St-Louis was asked what made the difference in Slafkovsky’s game tonight, he explained:

That’s not the first time the coach has told us about the forward’s need to bring pace, and when The Athletic’s Arpon Basu pointed it out, adding that it seemed simple enough and wondered why it was so hard to implement, St-Louis chuckled and said, "I know." Basu’s right there, though: last season, it seemed like Slafkovsky had finally been convinced to move his feet and was reaping the benefits, but this year, it’s almost as if he’s forgotten. Perhaps tonight’s game will remind him, and it will finally be a closed case.

The Canadiens made a lot of giveaways in the game; after 40 minutes, they already had 14, four of which came from Lane Hutson. After 60 minutes, they were at 19, and he had six. It wasn’t the blueliner’s best night at the office; in the first few minutes of the second frame, he committed two giveaways in his own zone and helped the Habs look panicked and disorganized early. Generally, the good thing about Hutson is that when he gives the puck away, he doesn’t even take a second to lament his fate; he immediately backchecks to fix it, but when the giveaways happen deep in the Canadiens’ zone, there isn’t much time to make up for it.

Thankfully, he’s got a very short-term memory, at least on the ice, and can shake it off right away, not that he doesn’t care, though; there’s no doubt that he will be studying the stat sheet after the game and thinking back on how those giveaways happened. His desire to make amends right away and his capacity to shake things off are two big reasons why it’s hard to hold it against Hutson when he has a tough night. Besides, how many players can have six giveaways and still come out with a plus-two on the night?

It wasn’t a perfect night for the bottom pairing either, but it was a pretty good one. They found ways to make up for whatever mistakes they made. Arber Xhekaj scored a game-tying goal late in the first frame with a rocket of a shot that fooled Sebastian Cossa, though that goal probably wouldn’t have happened without Kirby Dach taking his sight away with his big body. The gritty blueliner then had his second fight in as many games, making an impact in many ways. Asked about his performance, St-Louis explained:

I thought Arber has been excellent; he was good again tonight, big goal, good fight for our team. I don’t tell Jacko that he’s got to shoot more; I tell him to play the game that’s in front of him. I think we know he has a good shot, and I like the balance that he has whether he shoots it, or he’ll move it or throw it down. It was good.

Meanwhile, his partner also scored a big tying-game goal, but his came with just over five minutes left in regulation, and it was his first career goal. It doesn’t get much better than this. After the game, he was beaming with joy when he told us about his tally:

Just one night after their collapse against the Winnipeg Jets, the Canadiens showed tremendous resilience, coming back from behind three times to win a game where they never took the lead until the very end. Unsurprisingly, Cole Caufield scored the game-winner, notching his 11th goal of the season and his third game-winner. The Habs will enjoy a day off on Friday before getting back down to business on Saturday.

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