Olympic champion relay sprinters voted The Canadian Press team of the year
Andre De Grasse watched Aaron Brown explode out of the blocks and round the corner with blazing speed.
SUNRISE, Fla. — The trap was there for the Canadiens to fall into, but they expertly side-stepped it in a way that signalled just how far they’ve come since the start of this season.
Back in October, the Canadiens brazenly dove headfirst into traps and paid dearly for it, leading Nick Suzuki and Jake Evans to call them “immature” on more than one occasion.
It didn’t appear they were growing up as fast as they needed to in November to help at least undo some of the damage incurred over seven losses through their first 11 games of completely immature hockey.
But watching the Canadiens earn their first win in six years against the Panthers in Florida on Saturday afternoon, watching them dominate the middle of the ice to score four goals to Florida’s zero, and watching them execute on all the little details of the game and play with discipline throughout made the maturity of their performance undeniable.
They were playing against the reigning Stanley Cup champions, playing for the first time in five days, and playing in front of a 23-year-old goaltender making his first-ever appearance in an NHL contest. These were conditions that would force them to play judiciously to win, and they respected that and got it done.
“I think it’s something we’ve been building, I don’t think it happens overnight,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, and he was right.
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It’s been a season-long process to this point, with four wins in the last five games and seven out of 12 played in December indicating meaningful progress.
If only it had come a bit sooner.
But…
“Sometimes it’s a step back to take giant steps forwards, and I feel we’ve been doing that,” said St. Louis, “and when you have a game like that, it’s great, and it shows, and I think it brings confidence to the group in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”
How the Canadiens did it against the Panthers was surgical.
They put the puck in the right places, avoided forcing plays at both blue lines and, ultimately, limited the Panthers to just five high-danger attempts at five-on-five.
If you want a sense of how that settled Dobes’s nerves, he said after the game, “I think I saw almost every puck.”
The Ostrava, Czechia, native stopped all 34 that got to his net, but only two of them really threatened to get by him.
Even with the Panthers down 3-0 and pressing hard in the third period, the Canadiens kept them largely at bay, leading Suzuki to laud their growth.
“For sure, it’s been huge from the start until now,” he said.
Evans, who scored Montreal’s third goal unassisted — and on a shorthanded odd-man rush — concurred.
“I think we played with fire earlier in the year and we learned our lesson,” he said. “That was a very mature third. Everyone was on board, everyone wanted to get pucks out, everyone wanted to help Doby get his first one.”
The Canadiens put the young goaltender in position right from the start.
Even with heavy legs following turkey dinners and holiday treats, they were on their toes. They were aggressive without being reckless, and they were calculated in countering Florida’s attack by flipping pucks through the neutral zone and winning races.
As St. Louis said, “The pressure they brought, we bypassed it.”
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That led to the second of two goals Kirby Dach scored to double his total on the season.
What led to the first one was a strong zone entry by Patrik Laine, who then pushed the puck back to the point for Kaiden Guhle, who found Alex Newhook at the side of Spencer Knight’s net.
Newhook then passed it across the crease to Dach, who whiffed on the puck with his stick and inadvertently directed it into the net with his foot.
It was a great bounce for a player who said afterwards that he had received precisely “zero” others like it so far this season.
Newhook needed that bit of luck, too, to finally register his first assist of the campaign.
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There was nothing lucky about his second one, nor was there anything flukey about the finishing move Dach pulled off to make it count and put the Canadiens up 2-0.
It’s premature to say both players are finally ready to help consistently give the Canadiens the four-line flood they’ve been coveting all season — the one they had in this game — but at least it inspires some hope they might be.
Still, the mature thing for Newhook and Dach to do now is avoid revelling in this performance.
That’s what the Canadiens know they must all do ahead of Sunday’s afternoon game at Amalie Arena, where they haven’t beaten the Lightning since April of 2022.
“Understand that what we did today is awesome,” said St. Louis, “but nobody cares once the puck drops (tomorrow).”
A mature team gets on the plane, enjoys a good meal, gets to the hotel, gets its rest, and comes prepared to replicate the effort against a Lightning team that’s facing a faster turnaround after hosting the New York Rangers Saturday night.
The Canadiens may still be far from fully grown up, but at least the steps they’ve taken of late make it feel like there’s a good chance they’ll conduct themselves that way.
That’s a big change from what we saw two months ago, when it felt like the Canadiens had no idea how to play a game like the one they played on Saturday.
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