It's time for Montreal Canadiens' coach Martin St-Louis to show that he can hold his players accountable and bring a deserving player into the lineup. Kirby Dach has played himself out of contention.
The Montreal Canadiens lost Game 2 to the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 in overtime, but at the end of the day, Martin St-Louis’ men beat themselves on the night. They played a great game for 52 minutes, but after that, they made too many mistakes, and the Bolts made them pay.
We’ve often heard St-Louis say that good teams will make you pay cash for your mistakes, and Tampa Bay is a good team. If you turn the puck over high in your zone just by the blueline like Juraj Slafkovsky did on Tuesday, giving them a prime opportunity, they will feast on it.
If you’re too tired to take two or three more strides at the end of a shift before clearing the puck, they will make you pay. If you stop playing because you feel there should have been a call, they will make you pay. That’s what Tuesday night’s game came down to in the end.
That, and the fact that when Jon Cooper elected to send Scott Sabourin on the ice with two minutes left in the game, and he took an unnecessary but predictable penalty, the Canadiens couldn’t make them pay. They came close, they hit the post, but that was their opportunity to win, and they missed it. Something they weren’t able to bounce back from.
Montreal goes back home with a 1-1 split, which is a good result in the grand scheme of things, but they’ll have to get over the disappointment that they came oh so close to going home with a 2-0 lead. That will be made easier if the coach puts his money where his mouth is and makes at least one lineup change, scratching Kirby Dach.
The Albertan has a good pedigree; he was a third-overall pick, but he hasn’t lived up to it despite multiple opportunities. Time and time again, he was given opportunities to play in the top six, and he didn’t live up to expectations. Still, St-Louis decided to put him in the lineup for the playoffs, on a third line alongside Zachary Bolduc and Oliver Kapanen. Two games in, he’s been pretty much invisible except in the dying minutes of Tuesday night’s game when his two mistakes sealed the Canadiens’ fate.
St-Louis often says hockey is a game of mistakes, and you have to cut down on them to be successful. You must worry about the details and play the right way. With the game tied at 2-2, not icing the puck is not a detail; it’s more important than that. With tired players at the end of a shift, it’s vital.
Granted, it’s a shame for Dach, but he hasn’t been able to take flight, and he’s run out of runway. It’s time to ground him, especially with good options waiting in the wings. Veteran Brendan Gallagher must be foaming at the mouth at the thought of playing his first game in the series. The same goes for Joe Veleno. Neither is as talented as Dach, but both play a more committed, determined game and will be visible for the right reasons.
Veleno didn’t use to be the kind of player who goes out on the ice and forechecks hard, but he understood in less than a season that if he wanted to play for the Canadiens, that’s what he would have to do. Something Dach hasn’t been able to understand in four seasons. He’s also younger and has more energy than Gallagher, but the veteran has a lot of playoff experience and bleeds red, white, and blue. Whoever the coach picks doesn’t matter, as long as he picks one and shows Dach that what he did was unacceptable.
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