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It’s game three that the trend truly develops in a series. After two games of feeling each other out, it is in the third game that coaches have made their adjustments and the series starts to settle in at a location that it likely finishes. Not always with the result, but, at least, the tenor of the play.
The third game was the first exciting and competitive game. In overtime, the Hurricanes won 3-2.
Wilde Horses
The Hurricanes are a very talented team, but they are a soft team. When the Panthers beat them in five games last playoff, they simply were not ready to take the hits that Florida threw at them. The way to beat Carolina is through them. The Buffalo Sabres would have been a match-up the Hurricanes would have detested.
The problem for the Canadiens is the officiating is soft as well. It’s completely unlike the Sabres and Lightning series. The bodies and fists were flying in those series, and most times, it took a murder for a penalty to be called.
Montreal is trying to be physical and get in the mud a bit, but they’re getting penalties called often for extracurricular activities that seemed to be encouraged in the first two rounds. Now a slight face wash is two minutes as the league sets a completely different standard.
Not sure the Canadiens bring enough muscle themselves in their present construction, but hitting is still recommended. It was a solid forecheck that produced the first goal. Alex Newhook won the blue line. Jake Evans followed up in the corner. Ivan Demidov took over from there. Demidov made a perfect feed to a charging Mike Matheson who wired it upstairs for his second of the playoffs.
The Canadiens tied it in the second period on a breathtaking goal by two young superstars. On the power play, it was Lane Hutson to Cole Caufield to Hutson to Caufield to Hutson and into an open net. The first pass was in their own zone. The last pass was two feet from Frederik Andersen.
Andersen left the net so far open it looked like he drew the second assist on the play. In truth, it was the other goalie who got the second assist Jakub Dobes.
In the battle of goaltenders, as it has been through this entire playoffs, it was advantage Dobes. He was called on to make a number of absolutely tremendous saves as he continued to bring his Goals Saved Above Expected in these playoffs well ahead of his nearest rival.
At the other end, Andersen looked afraid. The telltale sign of anxiety in a goalie is can they catch 50-footers. It’s the arms that are the least reliable when anxiety takes over. Andersen was whiffing at 50-footers with 50 miles-per-hour on the shot.
His save percentage is barely registering .800 in the series after posting a .950 in the first two rounds. Something was making Andersen anxious that he had not been feeling before playing Montreal. A number of around .800 isn’t usually good enough. His Goals Saved Above Expected is a miserable negative 3.5. His opposite Dobes is plus 1.9.
Wilde Goats
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One of the ways that the Canadiens were supposed to be more effective than the Hurricanes was a battle of fourth lines. Carolina constructed what most teams do on their fourth lines — they chose muscle. William Carrier, Mark Jankowski, and Eric Robinson are all tall and strong.
Usually, an NHL fourth line isn’t expensive, nor known for being talented. The truth is, in a cap world, by the fourth line, General Managers have run out of money. In the first two rounds, the fourth line didn’t score for the Hurricanes.
Against the Canadiens, they are winning the battle of the fourth lines in a big way. Robinson has two goals, and on the opener in game three it was the work of Jankowski and Carrier that led the way for Shayne Gostisbehere to count. Kirby Dach and Zachary Bolduc are supposed to be winning this battle.
However, they are missing a centre. Oliver Kapanen couldn’t find his way at the higher intensity of the playoffs. Joe Veleno is in and out of the line-up trying to make a difference. Montreal is short a centre, and therefore, right now, they are short a line in a battle they should win.
The best line of the playoffs for the Hurricanes has been Logan Stankoven centering Taylor Hall and Jackson Blake. For two games, they were shutdown. The Phillip Danault line got the assignment in the first period to stop them, but they counted on a Hall rebound.
The Hurricanes were flooding zones, were first on pucks, winning puck battles, and generally swarming like they can. It’s not an especially talented team, but they play talented all through the line-up. Their first line has done nothing in the playoffs, yet they have only one loss.
Many more line-ups have far more talent than this one, and they’re all eliminated already from the playoffs. Large swaths of Hurricanes were rejected by other clubs for not being good enough.
Gostisbehere was put on waivers by the Flyers. The New York Rangers moved on from K’Andre Miller because he was so disappointing. Hall went 28 games without a point with the Blackhawks and Chicago decided to move on from him.
Stankoven was the consolation prize in a trade with Dallas when the Hurricanes management messed up the Mikko Rantanen deal so badly not realizing Rantanen wanted no part of North Caroina in a long term contract. Jalen Chatfield is such a journeyman that he didn’t even become an NHL regular until he was 27. Their starting goalie Frederik Andersen has been tossed around like a hacky sack.
What’s the common denominator of this group that shouldn’t be this good? They play for Rod Brind’Amour. They are definitely not even close to the most talented roster, but they may be the best.
Canadiens Head Coach Martin St. Louis has been outstanding in adjusting to mid-series changes against Jon Cooper and Lindy Ruff. He is now facing a force a bit more organized from every single player that Brind’Amour throws over the boards.
There’s no missing link on this roster that makes their opposition feel like they have too many men on the ice. The Expected Goals was 3.01 to 1.45 for Carolina after regulation time. The Canadiens seemed to change strategies in the third period from reversing the play defensively to high alley-oops on breakouts to catch a streaking forward for a quick strike turnaround.
It may not lead to much offence, but, at this point, Montreal’s head coach is just looking to not defend so much.
The Canadiens went to a seventh overtime these playoffs in their 17th game. The grind for the Canadiens has been the most difficult in these playoffs. No other team has played 17. No other team has gone to seven overtimes. It’s going to be a massive challenge to beat the power in the Atlantic Division for one, and then a rested Carolina team for another.
The Hurricanes won it with an Andrei Svechnikov shot that Sebastian Aho deflected and screened Dobes. That’s two overtime wins for Carolina and a 3-4 record for Montreal in overtime.
Wilde Cards
General Manager Kent Hughes has made 42 trades in his four years at the helm of the Montreal Canadiens. He probably has taken a loss in only one of those trades, and even that trade he salvaged in the end. One of his first moves was sending Artturi Lehkonen to the Colorado Avalanche for first round pick Justin Barron.
The reason that Hughes made that trade is he didn’t imagine that his rebuild would be so successful that he could actually use Lehkonen in a playoff push. He didn’t think Lehkonen would have any career left by the time that the Canadiens group he was developing was ready to contend.
However, with the second fastest ‘bottom to playoffs’ rebuild this century behind only the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Canadiens have already achieved final-four success. The Canadiens likely don’t lose too much sleep over the Lehkonen deal though, considering the eventual turning over of Barron for Alexandre Carrier.
One of the important skills of a GM is they have a sense of when a player has stopped levelling up. It’s at that moment that value is known, and if that value isn’t high enough, then they must deal the player away before the rest of the general managers in the league also see that the player has plateaued.
This is what Hughes did to perfection with his 34th trade on December 18th, 2024. He felt that Barron wasn’t going to reach the promise that he showed when he was drafted so high. Barron hasn’t improved his game since the trade. He averages 13 minutes and was a healthy scratch on a suspect Nashville blue line last season.
Meanwhile, it would be hard to imagine any of this playoff success without Carrier who shows that decision-making intelligence is more valuable than height. Carrier makes smart decisions all game long, and he plays with a massive amount of courage.
It seemed an odd trade when it happened for a rebuilding team to trade away a young player for someone six years his senior. However, if one player has limited future value, and the other can help the line-up for the next five years, it doesn’t really matter in what phase a rebuild is.
The key to success is evaluation. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but it often feels like Hughes and his group have seen into the future. By acquiring a reliable defender on the right side, the Canadiens made a huge move toward their present success.
A year later they acquired Noah Dobson also for the right side. Imagine where they would be on the right without these two moves.
This is how you build a winning hockey team.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.
