Oilers 7 – Canadian 2 | Abandonment at the Bell Center

One wonders how Samuel Montembeault could have felt.

The Canadian goalkeeper was already experiencing an evening of misery. He had just allowed five goals, he was on his own, and in front of him, very few players in red seemed to want to be there.

Then the big Zack Kassian allowed himself to go behind the net and hit Montembeault in the head. The young goalkeeper’s mask was thrown into the air by the force of the impact.

There are many unwritten laws in hockey, and this one is very clear: you don’t touch the goalie.

Still, Kassian was able to continue skating without a problem, and Jeff Petry, closest to the stage, barely looked at him.

It’s games like that that explain this season of misery and this other loss, this time by a score of 7-2 against the Edmonton Oilers, Saturday night at the Bell Centre.

When an opposing player allows himself to pick up the keeper like that and all five players on the play pretend to look away, it says a lot. It says most of the guys on this team quit. It says that the level of disengagement is such that no one is ready to come to the defense of a teammate.

It says that this team, in general, is completely extinct.

“We could have reacted better, held together better,” replied Tyler Toffoli.

Indeed. Finally, with only 5 min 55 s left in the match, it was Michael Pezzetta who tried to settle Kassian’s case, the time of a brief fight in which he certainly did not have the advantage.

At the end of the evening, Jeff Petry expressed some regrets.

“Thinking about it, I should have at least gone in his face, talked to him a bit… It’s something that comes back to me. No one has to go fight with Kassian, we know what kind of player he is, but at least go in his face so he knows it’s not okay to hit the goalkeeper like that. »

We must now ask ourselves what all this will end up meaning for Dominique Ducharme.

The management of the Canadian has been saying since December that the coach will certainly be there until the end of the season, but often, when a team no longer wants to advance, it is the coach who is singled out.

But what did we see on the Bell Center ice on Saturday night? We saw a team that seemed to give up. We saw players in red, several players in red, playing as if it was not so important. Jeff Petry, among other disappointing moments, found himself handing the puck to the Oilers, who turned another blunder into a three-for-zero run against poor Cayden Primeau, who had taken over from Montembeault.

A three against zero, you’ll admit we don’t see that that often.

“Everyone comes into games with the best of intentions,” added Petry. And sometimes like [samedi soir], it slips from our fingers, and we have the impression of being defeated before the match is even over. We don’t fight like we should throughout the game. It’s like stopping…”

This is where we are.

A team that doesn’t win is one thing. But a team that doesn’t win because it thinks it’s beaten in advance and because it doesn’t really feel like fighting, that’s something else.

And that, for a coach, is never very good.

In details

A victory without McDavid

Extremely rare exploit among the Oilers: a victory without the slightest production from Connor McDavid. The prodigious striker was indeed cleared of the score sheet. Prior to Saturday’s game, the Oilers had lost 14 of the last 15 games McDavid had gone scoreless. “It’s good to have secondary production, to have production from the four trios. It gives our big players a break, ”noted Zach Hyman, author of two goals and an assist. The number 97 trio still hit the target, when Evander Kane deflected a shot from Evan Bouchard to open the scoring. For Kane, it was a nice way to make friends on his new team. But for the rest, this unit was rather quiet. “There was some rust and timing issues, but that was to be expected,” Kane admitted after the game.

Savard’s turn to fall

Decidedly, it does not stop going well with the Canadian. Now David Savard arrives in the infirmary. The seasoned defenseman has an ankle injury and will be out for eight weeks, the Habs announced after the game. Savard was one of the only two team players to have played in all CH matches this season, at least until Saturday evening. Only Nick Suzuki remains as “iron man”. His absence allowed Kale Clague to return to the roster after being scratched in the previous three games. Clague formed a duo with Chris Wideman. Although they were mainly opposed to the fourth line of the Oilers, the two accomplices ended their evening with a record of -2 each.

physically dominated

For the second time this week, the Habs struggled against a heavy trio. Hyman and Zack Kassian, the two wingers of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, each tip the scales at 211 lbs. In Minnesota, it was the trio of Jordan Greenway, Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Foligno that dominated the Habs. This inability of the CH to impose themselves physically allowed the Oilers to work as they pleased in the enclave. Incidentally, the visitors scored their first two goals winning the battle for positioning in net, while Hyman did what he wanted against Ben Chiarot before setting up the Nugent-Hopkins goal, which gave the Oilers a lead 4-1. In the absence of Savard, Chiarot is the only defenseman over 215 lbs for the Canadiens. This kind of evening is likely to happen again often in the coming weeks…

They said

Tyler Toffoli

Rising

Michael Pezzetta

He didn’t score and played very little, but his decision to go and challenge Zack Kassian testifies to an undeniable strength of character that is not the lot of everyone in this team.

Falling

Ben Chiarot

He was on the ice for six Oilers goals. We call it a terrible night.

The number

20

The number of goals allowed by the Canadiens in their last three games.