Dominique Ducharme bit his lip. For a rare time this season, Ducharme did not keep his cool so easily. And we can understand it. There was nothing cheering for the Canadian in this 6-0 debacle against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
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“Tonight, we weren’t good,” said Ducharme. We just weren’t good. You take a situation and we weren’t good. In all situations. For the last five, six or seven games, we were in the game. A game often made a difference. Tonight, we weren’t good. “
The Penguins battered their rivals from the first to the last minute. Sidney Crosby got the ball rolling by scoring his first goal of the season in the first period and the visitors kept their foot on the accelerator all night. Prior to this stint in Montreal, the Penguins had suffered three losses in a row and had won only one of their last six games (1-3-2). But against the Habs, the gang at Crosby still looked like that mighty machine that won the Stanley Cup in 2016 and 2017. It was probably more an indicator of how weak rivals were than how strong the winners were.
“Tonight, it’s not the kind of game we want to play and in all situations: offensively, defensively, coming back to our zone, attacking, with the puck or without the puck,” said Ducharme. That’s all. We come back to what we did recently. Tonight was a bad night. We were bad. “
Still the hole
On the eve of this game against the Penguins, Brendan Gallagher had repeated the good old message that CH were already in a pretty deep hole and that it was time to go on a winning streak. Gallagher said that no player in that locker room was to give up.
Ducharme did not question the intentions of his proteges.
“For a game like tonight… There’s no one who shows up at the office hoping to have a bad day. There is no one who shows up at the arena hoping to have a bad game. Tonight, we were just bad. Everyone has to go through this. But we were just bad. I can be here and try to dissect every facet of the game. But in reality, we were just bad. ”
Bad is the word that sums up this game perfectly. And a word that also sums up this season very well (4-13-2).
Ducharme departed from his favorite word of the evening to talk about Mattias Norlinder, probably the only light of this match. “He has good vision and great confidence with the puck. For him, it was a good start. In Cole Caufield’s case, the white-haired man hasn’t been so complimentary.
“With the puck, he had a few flashes on the offensive aspect. This is a good thing. The number 22 ended the meeting with a record of -3.