Canadian 1 — Blue Jackets 5 | Like a bad memory

(Columbus) They promised themselves it would never happen again. That inspired by their new coach, they would fight in all situations, until the last second.

The lackluster performance of the Canadiens’ players, which led to an embarrassing 5-1 loss on Wednesday night, brought back a bad memory. Like a hangover from the first half of the season, in which trash-canning games were the norm rather than the exception.

No need to look for culprits, because no one was really very good. The attackers seemed to be unfamiliar with each other, the defenders were constantly out of position and goalkeeper Samuel Montembeault will not present the video of his performance when he negotiates his next contract.

In the morning, a few hours before the match, head coach Martin St-Louis had once again reminded how important the last nine games of the season were going to be to “build” in view of the summer and the next training camp.

We can now reduce this range to eight games. Because of this 74^and duel of the season, frankly, there is not much positive to remember.

“I’m going to watch it again and I’m going to try to find something,” promised St-Louis at the end of the evening. When someone who has just spent the last two and a half hours behind the bench can’t find anything good to say about his troops, all the more so when it’s his habit to easily salute the good moves of his proteges, that’s enough eloquent.

“We didn’t have enough sense of urgency,” he summed up, adding that things had improved in the third period – but not that much.

Joel Edmundson was less polite: “We wanted to be too fancy [et] we have made too many reversals. [Les Blue Jackets] are a fast team, they will take advantage of it. We started playing as we are capable of five minutes from the end. We won’t win many games like that. »

Proof that certain subjective statistics should be used with caution, the minor officials of the Nationwide Arena estimated that the Canadian had lost only two pucks at the hands of his opponents. Anyone who had the courage to listen to the match until the end can testify that it is far, very far from reality.

Fatigue

Visibly irritated by the behavior of his club, Edmundson had a lot to say after the meeting.

Asked if the fatigue had started to be felt, he quickly dismissed this hypothesis. “Everyone plays the same number of games, decided the defender. There are no excuses for the way we played. If you’re tired, you have to find a way to fight. I’m sure some guys on the other team were tired too. »

Here too, St-Louis was more nuanced. “It was a difficult season, with the change of coach and everything, he recalled. I ask a lot of them, there is a lot of information to integrate. We looked like a mentally tired team. »

Ryan Poehling was also sensitive to this argument.

“We have been through a lot of ups and downs. It’s not easy to be kicked out of the playoffs after just 20 or 25 games,” he noted.

However, now is not the time to give up, as many players try to promote themselves, whether to get a better contract in the summer or to obtain a more advantageous position next season. Poehling, for example, certainly has an agreement in his pocket for 2022-2023, but nothing guarantees his place if ever the management is active during the offseason.

“Eight or nine games can change a career,” he concluded. As a team, we want to end on a good note. »

Thursday’s day off will be good, as a pair of tough matches await the CH on Friday and Saturday, against the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals, respectively. Two teams that lead 19-10 in total goals scored this season against the Habs. Two teams which, all the more reason, are doing quite well these days, which is not the case with the Montrealers, who are giving away shots and have only won 3 of their last 12 games.

However, it is not excluded that Carey Price makes his comeback during the Easter weekend. And if there is one who can perform miracles, it is him. It would be timely, let’s say.

Up: Jeff Petry

In a match where no one really shone for the Canadian, Petry gave a solid performance.

Down: David Savard

From the start of the meeting, it did not seem to click between Alexander Romanov and him. The two finished the evening with a differential of -3. The Quebecer’s ice time (18 min 30 s) was one of his lowest this season.

The number of the game

82%

Rare ray of sunshine in this dull overall performance: Nick Suzuki won 82% of his faceoffs (14 in 17).

In details

Anderson and Savard welcomed as heroes

It was the first time, Wednesday, that David Savard and Josh Anderson skated on the ice of the Nationwide Arena in a different uniform than that of the Blue Jackets. The first was traded to the Lightning at the end of last season and agreed with the CH during the summer; the second moved to Montreal a year and a half ago following a transaction, but, due to the pandemic, the Habs had still not set foot in Columbus since. In the first half, a video paying tribute to the two players was presented on the giant screen, which earned them a warm ovation from the crowd. She reserved her loudest applause for Savard, who played nearly 600 season games with the Jackets. He and Anderson, visibly touched, gave long greetings to their former supporters. A beautiful moment.

evening of premieres

Not one, but two Blue Jackets players played against the Canadiens in their very first game in the NHL. Defender Nick Blankenburg and forward Kent Johnson, who played with the University of Michigan Wolverines just a few days ago, were therefore treated to a solo tour of the rink, as is tradition. Well served by his skating, Johnson, the team’s first-round pick in 2021, was notably entitled to ice time on the power play. Hired as a free agent, Blankenburg also did well, earning the first assist of his career. Let us mention about him, unrelated to his performance, that the 5 ft 9 in that his official file attributes to him constitute a frankly generous measure. When he spoke to reporters in the morning, it was hard to believe that this tiny little man was going to have to stop Josh Anderson in the evening.

Poehling, three months later

On January 17, the date of Ryan Poehling’s last goal, Dominique Ducharme was still the head coach of the Canadiens and Quebec was worried about a fifth wave of COVID-19. A little less than three months later, and after a 26-game drought, the American again moved the ropes, and in a nice way, moreover, by skillfully deflecting a shot from Nick Suzuki on the power play to reduce the gap at 3-1 at the end of the second period. Players rarely like to talk about their individual successes after a defeat, but Poehling admitted that goal did him good, especially as it brought his team back into the game. We certainly won’t start talking about a specialty, but Poehling had scored his previous goal almost identically. He also pointed out that he had refined his work around the net last season with the Laval Rocket, and again this year in Montreal. He thus tries to create a screen in front of the goalkeeper while becoming an option for a deflection. This is an obvious string to his bow, as he has yet to establish himself as a playmaker in the NHL.

They said