Martin St. Louis decided two things were plaguing the Montreal Canadiens last week: their bad habits and their mindset. The bad habits were easy to see — turnovers in bad spots on the ice, a lack of patience and faith in their teammates’ ability to get pucks back, taking risks with not enough reward on the other side of them.
It’s a long list.
But the mindset was a bit vague, at least in the way St. Louis was communicating it. He wasn’t asked directly what kind of mindset the Canadiens need to have, the kind of mindset he was trying to instill during a bag skate at the end of practice in Washington on Friday.
So we asked him directly on Saturday morning, before the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and St. Louis stopped to think about it. He took a full 10 seconds before answering.
“To me, it’s understanding, one, that every play matters,” he began. “It’s having actions that take care of more than one person. They take care of the rest of the team. And those actions are different — you don’t know when you’re going to have to make that action, the game is fast, there’s similar situations, but we don’t have enough actions that take care of the rest of the team.”
Would eating a puck or chipping a puck fall under the category of actions that help the team?
“Correct. It’s doing the job,” he said. “It’s doing a job that does not necessarily benefit you, but it benefits the team.”
The Canadiens went out later that evening and followed that mantra. They focused totally on actions their coach said would help the team. Except while they were entirely focused on not beating themselves, they were similarly not focused on beating the Penguins. Those actions that help the team need to be sprinkled in with actions that hurt the opposing team.
Which brings us to Lane Hutson.
He played his most conservative game as an NHL player Saturday night. No head fakes, no end-to-end rushes, just efficiency and safety. Exactly what his coach was preaching. On one hand, this is a positive sign of Hutson’s coachability and his ability to reign in his exceptional toolbox for the good of the team.
On the other hand, a conservative Lane Hutson is a waste of Lane Hutson.
In that fateful game against the Washington Capitals on Thursday, toward the end of the second period, Hutson got the puck near the left wall in the offensive zone, briefly considered driving it down into the offensive zone, and then thought better of it. Instead, he sent the puck over to his partner David Savard. He made the safe play.
Savard then found Nick Suzuki with a seam pass for a one-timer that tied the game 3-3 heading into the third period, a seemingly enormous goal at the time, not knowing the Canadiens would throw up all over themselves in the third.
We spoke to Hutson about that play the next day, after he and his teammates completed a bag skate to pay for their transgressions in the third period of that game against the Capitals. And he confirmed that yes, that was an example of the evolution Hutson is trying to make. Of picking his spots and sometimes settling for the simple play.
“Every situation’s different, but for me, if I were to beat one of those guys with a move, I would have just gotten myself into pressure,” Hutson said. “So yeah, to spread them out, kind of change the angle of attack and then potentially get the puck back from Savvy. Obviously he made a great play to Suzy.
“But yeah, that’s a perfect example.”
These are valuable lessons for Hutson to learn, and yes, in that instance, taking the conservative route worked out.
“I was talking with the coaches here, and I want to get more out of the puck touches I get,” Hutson said in Washington. “If I’m making a move, and I’m going to have to make another move, it kills the play and it could be a dead play and end up in a rimmed puck anyways. So I felt like if I could add a little bit of diversity, that’ll help my game a little bit. And so far it’s helped quite a bit.”
But against the Penguins, he seemed to take it too far, which is understandable considering the coach’s priorities for that game.
There was a goal the Canadiens allowed against the Seattle Kraken last Tuesday that seems especially relevant here. In a situation very similar to the one in Washington before he sent the puck over to Savard, Hutson dove down into the offensive zone, wound up turning the puck over, the Kraken went up the ice and Eeli Tolvanen scored on an odd-man rush with Hutson unable to get back in time.
We don’t know if that sequence came up in a video session or not, but it seemed to be another perfect example of what Hutson is now trying to actively avoid.
“I know coaches, we’ve had talks about what he sees, just to make sure that when he goes down (into the offensive zone), it’s the right decision for the whole team,” Savard said Saturday morning. “We don’t want to give up odd-man rushes, we’ve got to evaluate the risk he’s taking and a lot of times it’s the right decision. A few times, we gave up a couple of goals from just giving odd-man rushes. So we’re just trying to help him in making sure he’s going down at the right times. He knows. I think he’s really talented and he knows how to read the game and he knows when he kind of screwed up a couple of times there.
“I think he’s trying to see where the line is, when he can go on offence and go all out.”
What we saw from Hutson on Saturday against the Penguins, however, was not a version of Hutson that will help the team, especially when the team is struggling mightily to generate anything offensively, as the Canadiens were over the first 40 minutes of that game.
There has to be an acceptance of what Hutson is, that his positives will come with negatives, and as long as at the end of the game the positives outweigh the negatives, you live with those negatives. Handcuffing him doesn’t seem like a solution that will ultimately help the team
This doesn’t only apply to Hutson, it applies to all of the Canadiens’ offensively gifted players.
But there is a reason Hutson is on this team, and it’s not to efficiently execute D-to-D passes. When St. Louis talks about needing to find a balance between actions that help the team and allowing offensive creativity to flow, there is no better example of a need for that balance than the way Hutson played Saturday.
Juraj Slafkovský is not happy with his play in the offensive zone of late. (Charles LeClaire / Imagn Images)
The struggling forwards call themselves out
From a numbers perspective, Juraj Slafkovský and Alex Newhook appear to be having vastly different seasons.
Slafkovský has eight points in nine games, Newhook has two in 12 games. They are worlds apart.
But they are similar in the way they are evaluating how they are playing right now.
St. Louis mentioned last Tuesday morning how Slafkovský needs to be “direct with his actions” in the offensive zone. When Slafkovský was asked Saturday morning what being more direct in the offensive zone would look like for him, he didn’t hold back.
He’s not happy with how he’s playing in that area of the ice so far.
“I think I have to bring more in the offensive zone,” Slafkovský said. “I have to be stronger on the puck, I have to make plays, I have to shoot the puck better. I think that was just missing so far.”
Newhook, for his part, sees his numbers and has trouble looking past them and telling himself they only tell part of the story.
“It’s part of the game, I’m trying to play through it as best I can,” he said last Tuesday morning. “I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t, not unhappy, but maybe unsatisfied with the production. I hold myself to pretty high standards and I think I can be better at this point. But it’s early in the season, there’s lots of time to bounce back, lots of time to get a few here.”
St. Louis was asked about it Thursday morning and agreed that, similarly to how Slafkovský felt he was playing in the offensive zone, there is more for Newhook to do in that area, which might seem obvious based on the numbers. But the takeaway here is how satisfied St. Louis was with the other parts of Newhook’s game so far, at least on Thursday morning.
“I think he’s doing everything right, (except) when he gets in the O-zone,” St. Louis said. “Because I think off the rush, he’s been great. Defensively, he’s been great. Stealing pucks, backchecking, he’s playing the game. I think inside the (offensive) zone, there’s too many plays that die. So if he’s allowing himself not to die with the puck, you see another pitch.
“And right now, he just doesn’t get to see another pitch.”
Caufield is indeed being more selective
In last week’s notebook, we noted how Cole Caufield is not shooting nearly as much as he used to, which might be one reason why his shooting percentage is so high.
Thursday morning in Washington, we got a chance to present this significant dip in shot volume to Caufield and ask him about it. Is this a conscious decision to shoot less, or is it just circumstantial?
“I feel like sometimes I’d force things last year,” he said. “I kind of take a look at that, too. There are some games where I have one shot, other games when I have one shot, one goal. It’s like I still feel I’m getting the chances and maybe they miss the net or hit something along the way.”
Caufield then cut off, because it’s not just his shots on goal that are down, but his shot attempts as well. Which is when the real truth came out.
“I feel like if I’m not in a good spot to score, I think there’s probably a better play out there,” he said. “That comes with just evolving and learning how to break teams down. You don’t want to just take a shot and then have to go play defence the rest of the shift. You give it up and try to get it back. I can see myself not having 10 attempts a night right now, every once in a while those nights will happen, so it’s just to take them when you have them.
“I’m for sure being more selective.”
So, in other words, it is a conscious decision on his part to shoot less, to cut out some of the sharp-angle shots that had in some ways become his trademark because they don’t work nearly as often in the NHL as they did in college or junior. It is a conscious decision to adapt to the goaltenders he is facing and evolve.
A logjam or a deficiency on defence?
The arrival of Hutson has not only positively impacted the Canadiens’ talent level, it has changed the allocation of roles on the blue line and who can aspire to fill them.
In Justin Barron, Logan Mailloux and Arber Xhekaj, the Canadiens have three young defencemen with offensive skill sets, but defencemen who will never be better offensively than Hutson or Mike Matheson. And, therefore, as long as Matheson is around, there isn’t necessarily room on the Canadiens defence for another purely offensive defenceman.
And so, all three of those defencemen need to up their defensive quotient to become regulars in the lineup right now. We’ve already seen Mailloux sent back to Laval, and both Xhekaj and Barron have been healthy scratches.
None of them have benefited from Hutson’s smooth transition to the NHL.
The one guy who probably benefits most is Jayden Struble, because his NHL identity is clear as a physical, hard-to-play-against defensive defenceman. And the physical part of it is where he can show the most growth this season.
When New York Rangers defenceman Jacob Trouba destroyed Barron as he crossed the Rangers blue line with his head down, the immediate thought in this corner was that was something Struble could one day provide for the Canadiens: someone who makes you aware and cautious as you cross the Canadiens blue line.
When we presented Struble with this hypothesis, that this would be a way for him to solidify his spot in the NHL, he immediately began nodding.
“Even preseason going into this year, I think when I had those opportunities to hit, I have taken them,” he said. “I still don’t want to be running around taking penalties, so it’s more finding the spots. Again, when I’ve gotten them, I’ve taken them. Just more of that, just being harder in those areas. Especially in that area right over the blue line, an area where we’re killing anyway, just making myself felt, you know?”
The fact the coaching staff has trusted Struble to slide over to the right side when Xhekaj comes in for Barron is another feather in his cap, another way for him to stay in the lineup. Becoming one of those big hitters would be another way.
But on the flip side, those young offensive defencemen are looking to carve out some permanence in the lineup and need to up their defensive game to do it.
Xhekaj has spoken at length about his need to improve defensively, because if he does, he can provide that peacekeeping role that every team loves, as long as the peacekeeper can play a regular shift without hurting the team. That’s an attractive dimension Xhekaj has, but he needs his defensive play to improve for that dimension to be relevant, and he knows it.
For Barron, his dimension remains his offensive instincts and what he can do in the offensive zone. But he sees the writing on the wall, there are only so many purely offensive guys the Canadiens can dress.
“I don’t feel like I necessarily have to go away from my strengths that much,” Barron said Thursday morning in Washington. “In junior and in the AHL, I was playing PK, playing power play obviously. But power play is what it is, Billy (Matheson) and Lane are obviously really good offensive players too. For me, I can still create offence five-on-five, four-on-four, different situations.
“But I know what’s going to keep me in the league is being reliable defensively, being tough to play against and obviously (continuing) to improve my offensive game, too. But I feel like that’s still there, it’s the defensive part of my game that’s going to keep me in the league.”
Barron played against the Capitals later that night as Xhekaj sat. They swapped positions the next game in Pittsburgh. Struble has played every game since his return from injury on Oct. 19.
It is not difficult to ascertain that Struble provides what the Canadiens feel they lack on defence right now, and that Barron, Xhekaj and Mailloux need to lean in more on what Struble provides because Hutson is filling what would otherwise be their lane.
No pun intended.
(Top photo of Lane Hutson battling for the puck with Pittsburgh’s Lars Eller: Charles LeClaire / Imagn Images)
