Canadiens playoff notebook: The matchup game and how St. Louis eleven lifted Slafkovský

MONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens are up 2-1 of their first-round playoff collection towards the Tampa Bay Lightning despite not getting a single goal at five-on-five from their high line of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský.

That high line has produced on the ability play and was a giant purpose the Canadiens received Game 1 behind a power-play hat trick from Slafkovský. But they did it in Game 3 with depth scoring, which was a significant concern coming into the collection.

“I don’t think it really matters who scores the goals,” Slafkovský stated after an non-compulsory apply at Bell Center on Saturday. “It matters that we win the game.”

After Game 3, Suzuki was requested repeatedly about his line’s incapability to interrupt by at five-on-five, one thing he himself identified to after a Game 2 time beyond regulation loss in Tampa.

“They’re game planning over there pretty hard on our line,” Suzuki stated Friday evening.

This is a brand new actuality for Suzuki’s line. While he has centered the Canadiens’ high line for years, it’s only this season that it has emerged as one of many high strains within the NHL, a line that requires a game plan in a playoff collection.

Lightning head coach Jon Cooper has given the project of shadowing Suzuki’s line to his duo of Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel, with a mix of Jake Guentzel and Nikita Kucherov taking part in with them.

“It’s a game plan we put in,” Cooper stated Saturday. “I wouldn’t sit here and say everything’s worked for us, but that sure has.”

Kucherov has additionally been restricted to 1 aim at five-on-five within the collection and Brayden Point is, nicely, pointless at even power, so it is not as if the Suzuki line is alone in that division. But it’s clear the Canadiens have a significantly better likelihood of successful the collection if this line will get going five-on-five.

Canadian coach Martin St. Louis has the choice of splitting Slafkovský from Suzuki and Caufield, as he did for a very good chunk of this season, however he does not sound like a coach who is prepared to try this. He stays assured of their capability to interrupt by as a result of there’s a confirmed monitor file there, but additionally as a result of that line’s efficiency isn’t solely primarily based on manufacturing.

“I mean, where do I start? You’re talking about really elite players,” St. Louis stated. “They have a tough matchup, and I’m OK with who they’re on the ice against. Do I try to help them during the game? Yes, I do. But I’m confident of how responsible they’re going to be, and they’re going to still generate (offence). I feel like they probably want to generate more, but you have three elite players that are trying to answer to the critics without hurting the team. It’s a fine line.

“What in the event that they go explode five-on-five and we lose 5-4? What are we going to speak about? That’s an awesome job, you bought the primary line going, however we lose the game. So it is a tremendous line. Those guys, they’re at all times a giant a part of our success, whether or not they’re on the scoresheet offensively or not, as a result of they rack up numerous minutes towards some actually good gamers. So, they will be tremendous.”

Part of the truth of what allowed Kirby Dach’s newly shaped line to provide all three Canadian objectives in Game 3 is the truth that Suzuki’s line is consuming these harder minutes to permit the remainder of the workforce to thrive beneath these minutes. The identical is true on protection, the place the third pairing of Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble are placing up unbelievable underlying numbers in restricted minutes towards the underbelly of Tampa Bay’s lineup.

This is commonly the place playoff collection are received or misplaced, additional down the lineup, and to date, the Canadiens have benefited from that. But in some unspecified time in the future, they’ll want that high line to interrupt by.

Someone who understands how Dach felt

Back on Oct. 29, 2023, the Canadiens left for a three-game highway journey to Las Vegas, Arizona and St. Louis.

It was Slafkovský’s second NHL season, and after accumulating an help within the season opener that 12 months, he had gone seven video games with out a level when he boarded that aircraft sure for Las Vegas. There was rumbling in Montreal that Slafkovský must be despatched to the AHL, that the Canadiens have been botching the event of the 2022 No. 1 decide on the NHL Draft. He was struggling.

In that game in Las Vegas, Slafkovský didn’t register a single shot on aim, left alone a degree, and did the identical in Arizona three nights later. Suddenly, that noise about his growth and a visit to the minors started resonating not solely in Montreal however across the league.

There was numerous noise round him, and there have been inner talks that maybe the Canadiens ought to certainly ship him to the AHL to get his confidence again. But St. Louis would have none of it. He wished to not solely hold Slafkovský, however within the Canadiens’ subsequent game, he promoted Slafkovský to his high line, the primary time he performed with Suzuki and Caufield.

It was similar to St. Louis’ determination to not solely keep Dach in the lineup for Game 3however transfer him again to middle and ask him to drive a line with Zack Bolduc and Alexandre Texier.

The confidence Dach felt from his coach in Game 3 is one thing Slafkovský felt again then in 2023, when he felt like your complete world was towards him, everybody besides his coach.

“I was just super happy,” Slafkovský stated. “I kind of felt confident on the inside because I knew he was still trusting me, still giving me the opportunity.”

He undoubtedly noticed a similarity between his personal state of affairs and the one Dach confronted after his errors in time beyond regulation value the Canadiens Game 2 in Tampa.

“You can’t even explain how much it helps when your coach trusts you that way,” he stated. “Because inside of you, you feel like s—, you feel like the past couple of games didn’t go your way, you’re not really confident at the moment. But when Marty trusts you, I feel like when the game starts, you don’t even think about what happened (before). You just want to prove it to yourself and prove it to him that you deserve to play.

“I really feel like that is what’s been taking place right here, both with me or Kirby yesterday. It was a stupendous game for him.”

St. Louis wasn’t always a Hall of Fame player. He had to scratch and claw his way there, but in order to get there, he needed to find a coach willing to give him that trust, and once he got it, he thrived and proved that coach right. He knows how it feels to have the impression the world is against you, except in his case, it was the hockey world and not necessarily the fans and the media.

One is a lot noisier than the other, but both require trust from a coach to allow a player to emerge on the other side of it.

A penalty killing adjustment from the Canadiens

The Canadiens generally have a penalty kill mindset that calls for controlled aggression, to remain in their structure to take away the middle of the ice, but still identify moments where they can aggressively attack the puck carrier.

That mindset does not apply in this series.

Whenever Kucherov gets the puck, usually on the half wall on the right side of the power play, the Canadiens have a forward running at him immediately, pressing him and forcing him to make a quick decision with the puck. Kucherov did exactly that in the first period of Game 2 when Alex Newhook aggressively closed on him while the Canadiens were attempting to kill off one of two penalties to goaltender Jakub Dobeš. Kucherov quickly moved the puck down low to Guentzel, and he immediately found Point in the slot for his first goal of the series.

But by and large, the Canadiens’ strategy has forced the Lightning to adjust, because in a perfect world, their power play flows through Kucherov.

“He’s clearly their finest participant and their quarterback; they wish to run all of it by him,” said Canadiens center Jake Evans. “I guess in a way it makes them have to switch things up and look for different options, which they did fine last game.”

Cooper says not every team does this to Kucherov, but obviously, the dynamic is different in the regular season when you face a team one time as opposed to as many as seven times in a playoff series.

“Through 82 games and playing 31 different teams, you get to see a whole bunch of different kills,” Cooper said. “Nobody’s reinventing the wheel, however there are totally different methods to it. Some folks depart him alone, some folks come proper at him, and he has this capability to discover a strategy to decide all of them aside. But he does not do it on a regular basis.”

This is a significant departure for Montreal’s penalty kill. They do not do that with simply anybody, however the Canadiens appear intent on forcing somebody on the Lightning’s energy play to beat them aside from Kucherov.

“Pressure’s tough,” Cooper stated. “You’ve got to make real skilled plays in a short amount of time and it can be tough.

“But if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s surely (No.) 86.”