Canadian 1 – Sabers 4 | Christmas before time

(Buffalo) Christmas is just around the corner, and obviously the Canadiens were already in the holiday spirit on that tough Friday night in Buffalo.

Richard Labbé
Press

Gifts, the Sabers players had for 60 minutes, or so. Nice gifts, in addition: passes on their pallets, beautiful lines of fire in the direction of goalkeeper Samuel Montembeault, plenty of space to work in the offensive zone …

Consult the summary of the meeting

It all led to the Canadiens losing another, this time 4-1 to the Sabers.

The Sabers goaltender on a beautiful Friday night in Buffalo was none other than Dustin Tokarski, who is a kind of cross between an acrobat and Greg Millen. It was a good opportunity to fill the net, but no, it didn’t happen.

It’s not too complicated: the Sabers ‘four goals were the direct result of the Canadiens’ blunders. From Lehkonen who loses the puck on the edge of the strip to Petry who gives it, to Drouin who tries a hazardous pass on the power play, to Lehkonen who finds himself on the slugs in his zone and who loses another puck.

Four blunders, four goals. Already this club is fragile, if in addition it offers pucks to others as gifts on the evening of December 24, the chances of victory are zero.

“During the four goals they scored, we were in possession of the puck,” said Dominique Ducharme. But at some point, we crack, and we make bad plays with the puck. ”

We sympathize with the coach of the CH, who has to come and explain the same things night after night, because his guys make the same blunders night after night. At least if the blunders came from the palettes of the youngest, we could understand. But the Lehkonen, Petry and other Drouin are not 20-year-old players.

“It’s frustrating,” added Ducharme. With these mistakes, you end up becoming your own worst enemy, and that’s what we did: we were our worst enemy.

“We are in the National League, we have to be able to play games. Efficient games, smart, well-executed games … As soon as you get away from that, then it’s the mistakes, and there is no defense against that. ”

In the second period, the Sabers threw 14 times… against only 2 shots for the Canadian. Over the seasons, general manager Marc Bergevin has repeatedly insisted on the importance of leadership, the importance of hiring players with character, to the point that we wondered if this was not the first criterion. hiring from home.

But where are the character players now? And above all, how many are there?

“We have already had several meetings this season, we talked about it… last season, all the guys knew their role, summarized Josh Anderson. Everyone was working hard. Seems like this season a lot of times it’s just one line per game that works, maybe two. We don’t have that consistency. It’s only happened a few times this season that we had the four lines that started working at the same time. ”

At the end of the evening, while the Canadian players all looked very low on the bench, the Sabers analyst on TV hammered home this statistic: “The Canadian has a differential of – 32 … It is a team that was in the Stanley Cup final last season! ”

The final ? It only seems like a very distant memory, from another time and another time. Let’s face it, the club in the final has very little to do with this one, especially in terms of self-confidence.

Last summer, it seemed like anything was possible. Now, when the Canadian is one goal behind, it feels like it’s already over.

On the rise: Josh Anderson

There aren’t many players who seem to take this to heart. He does it almost every night.

Down: Jonathan Drouin

We could put Jeff Petry’s name back here, but Drouin can’t attempt such a hit-and-miss pass to Suzuki when the club need a power-play goal.

The number

– 32

The Canadian differential after 22 games.

In details

Norlinder played … a little

As we know, the Canadian will soon have to make a decision about Mattias Norlinder: will he leave or will he stay? It’s quite a simple question, but in fact, it seems more complicated than that, and it is not the Friday night game that will decide the question. Thus, the young defender has been inserted into the roster, his first game since November 18 and barely his third of the season. With such a small sample, can the Canadian really come to an informed decision in his case? Against the Sabers, Norlinder was only employed for 13 minutes and 39 seconds of play. Does this youngster have what it takes to play in the NHL? At present, it is almost impossible to answer this question. The Canadian should decide to keep him or return him to Europe at the end of this trip, after Saturday night’s game in Pittsburgh. Recall that another defender, Joel Edmundson, could take over next week.

Tokarski is still here

Yes, the Dustin Tokarski who was in net for the Sabers on Friday night is indeed the same who wore the Canadiens jersey for 26 games and three seasons, between 2013 and 2016. After touring the American League, the keeper took the extra mile, tightened his belt, and decided to take a big bite out of life. The Sabers noticed this persistence and brought him back into the NHL last season, and Tokarski, with his 1980s average matched to his 1980s style, is still there, against all odds. At one point in Friday’s game, he pushed himself so far from his net that he did a 360 degrees before coming to his senses and going to get back up. At least he’s entertaining.

Big Friday night in Buffalo

The Sabers haven’t made the playoffs since the 1990s or so (we’re exaggerating, but hardly), and this drought is felt at the wickets; Heading into Friday’s games, the Sabers were last in NHL assists this season, averaging just 8,047 spectators. It looked something like this in the game against the Canadiens, with an announced crowd of 9,958 spectators, and rows and rows of empty seats. Bad faith people might point out that this is all very disappointing, because there is nothing to do in Buffalo other than go hockey anyway, but hey, we won’t go that far.

They said