Artturi Lehkonen was right to smile.
In the first period, a video on the Bell Center’s giant screen retraced the best moments from the six seasons he spent with the Canadiens. The highlight obviously being his winning goal in the association final, in June 2021.
The crowd applauded him warmly. And less than a minute later, he scored his club’s fourth goal, earning him another wave of love. The score was then 4-0. Each club added four goals en route to a convincing 8-4 victory for the Colorado Avalanche. But back to Lehkonen.
The Finn, we said, had every reason to smile. The supporters celebrating him on Monday night may well have been the same ones who two, three or four years ago called for him to be traded at the low price, tired of seeing him miss open nets.
Even if he had wanted to be inconvenient, there is no one, behind the bench of the Canadian, that he could have really taunted in relation to his use in Montreal. The fact that he got his 20e point of the season on the power play would have given him the material to do so. When he was with CH, with the exception of the 2017-2018 season and the few weeks before his departure last year, the 5v4 game was denied to him. Here he is an integral part of the massive offense of the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche.
His contribution is “hard to qualify,” said head coach Jared Bednar a few hours before the game, praising his intensity and efficiency in forechecking. “He likes to go to the net and score ugly goals,” he added. As we know, the goals-rejections have the same value on the score sheet as those who make the cabbage fat of Yvan Ponton.
“You want guys like that on your team,” Cale Makar said after the game. Not a bad compliment coming from a guy a lot of people want on their team.
“It’s hard not to love him,” added Bowen Byram.
Assessment
Did the Canadian, in these circumstances, make the wrong move by trading him, in March 2022, to the Avalanche in return for Justin Barron and a second-round pick?
Not really. Appointed in January 2022, general manager Kent Hughes inherited a club in poor condition, and he needed to get to work quickly to improve it. Offering an onerous contract to Lehkonen at the dawn of a long reconstruction would have been the opposite of optimizing his bargaining chips. It could also be argued that the number 62 is enjoying offensive success playing with Nathan MacKinnon and no longer with Jake Evans and Joel Armia. It is obvious.
However, we can wonder about the evaluation and use made by the Habs of its attacker over the years. A player drafted and developed during the reign of Marc Bergevin, whose record in this area has been, let’s be polite, mixed. A player who, despite the trough of the CH wave in recent years, has had little chance of playing on attacking lines.
Here he is, however, among the trusted men of his trainer. We won’t redo the entire drill with Lars Eller, but it’s fun to have seen him in action with the Avalanche on Monday as well. In his last season in Montreal, in 2015-2016, he played at the center only part-time. Since that day, he’s played center for teams that have reached the playoffs every year — he was with the Washington Capitals until recently.
These are two players who grew up in the bosom of the organization and who, failing to be entrusted with an interesting role in Montreal, found one… in better teams.
In victory as in defeat, and even in thaws like Monday, the evaluation of players is constant, said Martin St-Louis at the end of the evening. His flock, he said, are under constant scrutiny. “You evaluate all the time, every day. He also likes to say that he prefers to form his own opinion about his flock, ignoring their past or their status.
At a time when development is an ever-present topic in the life of the Canadiens, seeing Artturi Lehkonen go should be a serious reminder of the risk of labeling a player quickly. The reminder is valid for everyone, by the way. Talk to the Chicago Blackhawks, who parted ways with Kirby Dach last summer, or even the Pittsburgh Penguins, who preferred to acquire Jeff Petry over keeping Mike Matheson.
In this season of all learning, this lesson should not go under the radar.
Rising
Josh Anderson
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Josh Anderson scores his 20th goal of the season.
Despite the score, he played with intensity and produced scoring chances throughout the game. Finding himself on the right of Nick Suzuki gave him wings.
Falling
Kaiden Guhlé
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Kaiden Guhlé (21)
When he returned to the game two weeks ago, he said he had recovered from his knee injury. But is he totally comfortable in his movements? It’s not clear. He’s posted a -6 differential in his last two games.
The number of the match
2
By freeing Jake Allen from his suffering, Martin St-Louis changed his goalkeeper during the game only for the second time this season. Cayden Primeau was called in relief on January 19 after Samuel Montembeault allowed five goals to the Florida Panthers.
In details
A risky fight
Many of them held their breath when they saw the young Avalanche defender Bowen Byram dropping the gloves against Michael Pezzetta, one of the strong men of the Canadian. It’s that concussions derailed the early career of the player drafted in 4e rank in 2019. He has officially suffered three – but none this season so far – so Monday’s game was only his 76e in the NHL, although he has been there full-time since the shortened 2020-2021 season. Despite his heavy medical history, he did not hesitate to come to the defense of his partner on the blue line Samuel Girard, who had just been tackled hard by Pezzetta. “It’s part of hockey, but I’m not very good at it,” Byram admitted candidly. But sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. We defend each other. When we are attacked, we retaliate. As for his concussion issues, Byram explained that “it’s over, it’s in the past, I don’t think about it anymore.” For his part, Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said, “It’s an intense game, the temperature is rising and he defended his teammates. But I don’t want to see that all the time.” But Bednar then added, “I don’t want our guys backing down because they’ve been hurt before. I’m glad he says his problems are behind him and he has the confidence to do so. »
Costly Victory
Among the many incongruities of this match, note this one: the first star of the evening only played half of the match. We are of course talking about Artturi Lehkonen, author of two goals and an assist. By the end of the match, Bednar already had a clear diagnosis for the Finnish striker, the kind of information that the Habs are not used to revealing. Lehkonen therefore suffers from a broken finger and will be operated on Wednesday. Bednar added that he won’t know the length of the absence until the player has undergone surgery. The head coach did not know on which sequence the number 62 was injured, but he knows that it was the result of a puck which reached him. Note that Lehkonen scored the Avalanche’s first goal after deflecting a puck with one hand. The CH also finished the game with 11 attackers, since Rem Pitlick abdicated in the first period after falling hard against the ramp. It’s unclear what’s wrong with him, but Martin St. Louis said Pitlick will be on the plane to Pittsburgh for Tuesday’s game. If the crippled Justin Barron is ready to return to the game on Tuesday, St. Louis would still have the option of deploying a formation with 11 attackers and 7 defensemen. The option is interesting because it would avoid a player recall, and the Rocket must play an important game on Wednesday against Rochester, its direct rival in the race for the playoffs.
The return of the five attackers
When Devon Toews was punished at the end of the first period, the Canadian returned by deploying a power play with five attackers, a practice that we saw until mid-season, but which had been abandoned with the return to form. of defenseman Mike Matheson. Maybe Martin St-Louis was considering this change in the last game, but we will never know since no penalty was awarded. But this time, it was therefore a unit made up of Nick Suzuki, Denis Gurianov, Josh Anderson, Rafaël Harvey-Pinard and Jonathan Drouin who went into the fray. Matheson was part of the second unit. The group of five attackers ended up scoring a goal, but without taking anything away from Gurianov, the goal was the result of a favorable leap as he recovered a puck blocked by Samuel Girard and attempted a new shot, which the goalkeeper Alexandar Georgiev obviously did not see it coming.
Guillaume Lefrancois, The Press
They said
We weren’t ready at the start of the game. We left Jake [Allen] all alone. It is extremely disappointing. We have a group that never gives up, that won’t change. It’s been like that since the beginning of the season and, regardless of the score, we will always continue to fight. But it is extremely disappointing.
David Savard
You will have to erase [ce match] quickly. We play [mardi], this is perhaps the best thing that can happen to us, this second game in two nights. It gives us a chance to recover.
David Savard
Down 4-0, all you can do is put your head down and get to work. The guys did it well and we stayed positive as much as possible.
Nick Suzuki
Martin [St-Louis] wasn’t very happy after the first period. He reminded us that we hadn’t seen a match like this since last year. It’s embarrassing, we must never let that happen again.
Nick Suzuki
We can learn from every game. The style of play [de l’Avalanche] is quite rare, it’s no surprise that a lot of teams want to replicate it. The way their defensemen skate with the puck, their five-man unit, their structure… It’s pretty impressive.
Nick Suzuki
What can we learn? That we can’t give the defending Stanley Cup champions four goals if we want to win!
Chris Wideman
We weren’t in the game, we were too slow in our execution. They [l’Avalanche] were everywhere for 40 minutes. We finally decided to play hockey in the third period, but it was too late.
Josh Anderson
I loved our start to the game. It was our priority, because of our bad starts lately. Our tempo and our premiere execution were phenomenal. We didn’t create tons of chances, but we took advantage of them.
Jared Bednar
We don’t want Bo to have to do this, but we’re going to defend ourselves. The match was out of reach and they were starting to look for the chicane. When we saw the trio they were sending, we suspected something like this was going to happen.
Jack Johnson
We have several good players in defense, and it starts with Cale. Our coaches give us the green light. It’s hard for other teams to counter when a third or fourth wave arrives.
Bowen Byram on the attacking contribution of defenders