The Montreal Canadiens were closing their second-to-last homestand of the regular season on Thursday night at the Bell Centre by taking on the Columbus Blue Jackets. With both teams in the playoff race, it promised to be a tight game, and things got a bit heated during the post-morning-skate media availability. Martin St-Louis is clearly in playoff mode, and he didn’t care for being asked about any lineup changes. The coach doesn’t want to make things easier for the opponents by telling them what’s coming, and that’s his prerogative, at least until the league decides to make lineup disclosure mandatory as it is in the NBA.

After making 41 saves on Tuesday night, Jakub Dobes was unsurprisingly back in the net for the Habs. As for Joe Veleno, he made a return to the lineup since Alexandre Texier is day-to-day with a lower-body injury.

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Odd-Man Rush Central

Unfortunately for Dobes, the game started much like Tuesday’s one, with the Czech netminder being peppered with shots early on. With 8:22 left in the first frame, shots were 9-3 Columbus, and had it not been for the masked man, the score wouldn’t have been 1-0 Montreal.

However, that’s not what stood out the most in the first period; it was the number of odd-man rushes the Canadiens gave the Jackets. While it’s understandable for an offensive defenseman to tend to pinch at the blueline, Lane Hutson has to be able to evaluate the risk he’s taking. It’s in one of those instances that the Blue Jackets tied up the score.

Granted, it didn’t help that Struble was unable to handle Columbus’s clearance and ended up effectively setting them up for the two-on-one. The fact that the puck was in his skates made it quite hard to control, however. Furthermore, he was the one who had initially given Montreal the lead, joining the attack at the opportune time, and he was also on the ice for the Habs’ second goal, a strong game overall for the blueliner.

Speaking after the game, St-Louis explained:

The first frame was kind of like against Carolina; we gave them the puck. We killed plays, but we’d give the puck back, in our zone as well. We were dumping the puck in the wrong places; their goalie got to it throughout the first frame. We didn’t have any forecheck. When you have no forecheck, and you give the puck back in your defensive zone, you don’t have the puck. We didn’t hurt ourselves too much, and we played a better second frame and managed the third.

– St-Louis on his team's game

Cutting Down On Mistakes

Often this season, we’ve heard St-Louis mention his team had shot itself in the foot, committing too many giveaways, and we’ve seen a lot of that in the weekend when they lost back-to-back games to the San Jose Sharks and the Anaheim Ducks. Still, the young Canadiens were much better in that department against the Jackets.

Through 40 minutes, Montreal had only been guilty of three giveaways while Columbus had committed 10. Of course, there’s room for improvement when it comes to making the most of the opportunities given by the opponent, but the Habs are trending in the right direction when it comes to playing a responsible game.

After 60 minutes, they had a total of eight giveaways, and when they did make mistakes, Dobes was ready for it. After the game, St-Louis said:

He plays very good hockey. He’s a big part of our success. Hockey is a game of mistakes; you try to make as few as possible, and when you make them, you hope your goalie can fix them, and that’s what he’s doing.

– St-Louis on Dobes

Secondary Scoring

Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovsky's point streaks all came to an end tonight, and while on most nights their lack of production could have been a disaster for the Canadiens, it wasn’t on the night. The coach had decided to put Josh Anderson on a line with Zachary Bolduc and Jake Evans instead of with Phillip Danault and Brendan Gallagher, and it paid off.

Bolduc and Anderson both play a heavy game and are efficient on the forecheck, and tonight, they didn’t give the Columbus defence much time to execute. The Quebecer hadn’t scored a goal since December 23, and yet, in the first frame, when he had a chance to take a shot, he saw Struble coming up the wing, and he made the right read by giving him the puck to create the first goal.

Then, in the third frame, Evans made a perfect cross-zone pass to Bolduc, who had acres of space on the other side of the ice, and he was able to beat Jet Greaves with a sharp shot. It’s not been easy for the 23-year-old this season. The Canadiens play a special brand of hockey, and when you join, you have to learn to play the St-Louis way. That’s all about making the right reads, not only offensively, but defensively. It takes a certain level of commitment to that craft to buy into the team defence side of the game, and the coach has been impressed with Bolduc of late.

The bench boss feels like he has really put it all together when it comes to playing the right way without the puck in the last month or so, and while he wishes the players had been rewarded more often offensively, he’s convinced that good things are coming for the youngster.

The Habs won't practice tomorrow as they'll be traveling to Nashville to start a five-game road trip from which they'll only return on April 5th. 

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