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It won’t be of any consolation to the Montreal Canadiens, but the game they played against the Minnesota Wild on Thursday was unquestionably their most mature one of the season.
You wonder if a team desperate to string together wins can keep that in perspective after not finding a way to solve Filip Gustavsson and losing for a seventh time in the last eight games.
It must be beyond frustrating to have dropped this game 3-0, to have left Xcel Energy Center without having cracked a 10-game losing streak in the State of Hockey, and to have once again been held without a point in the standings.
The Canadiens are looking up at every other team in the league from the bottom, and that would only naturally blur some much-needed perspective on how this game actually went for them.
Not that the Canadiens were perfect.
It’s just that they were engaged right from the opening faceoff — physically and mentally — and they largely remained that way all the way through against arguably the most structured team in the league.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis saw it that way.
“We played the game tonight,” he told reporters in attendance. “It was tight. We were patient. Our intentions we’re good, and they’re steering us in the right direction. When you play that way, you’re going to be in every game.”
He has to hope his players will feel the same way after seeing one of their strongest efforts met with the same frustrating result they’ve had far too often through their first 17 games.
Judging by what some of them had to say before St. Louis spoke, it’s not a given that they will.
“We’re not in the business of being happy with losses,” said a sombre Mike Matheson, and he was right.
Still, Matheson was on his game in this one at both ends of the ice and he should take some confidence from it.
At one point he broke up a three-on-one rush being led by one of the league’s most dangerous players in Kirill Kaprizov. At others, he generated a team-high seven shot attempts.
It had to be demoralizing to not cash in on any of them — with 10 assists accumulated so far this season but no goals to speak of for the 30-year-old defenceman.
Matheson’s best chance came on a second-period rush, and he missed the net with it.
Juraj Slafkovsky and Kirby Dach hit on theirs in the third but didn’t exactly force Gustavsson to make his best saves of the night.
Slafkovsky was set up in the high slot by Lane Hutson and tagged Gustavsson’s armpit with his attempt. He could clearly be seen on camera mouthing “awful shot” after the puck was gobbled up by the Wild goaltender.
We’re not sure how Dach felt about the one he took into Gustvasson’s belly, but he couldn’t have been happy about firing it right in there when he had time and space — and a whole lot of momentum on a full-speed rush from the blue line in — to pick a corner.
You wonder if those plays will be haunting both players when it would do them well to focus on all the good things they and their teammates did in this game.
The Canadiens kept the eighth-highest scoring team to the outside for most of the night. They were responsible at both blue lines, refusing to turn over pucks in those areas and offer up odd-man chances, and they stuck to their plan even after two costly mistakes from Christian Dvorak left them at a deficit to properly defend the play that enabled Matthew Boldy to put the Wild up 1-0 in the 13th minute of the second period.
The Canadiens didn’t panic; they just kept pushing pucks deep and starting their offensive-zone scheme from behind Minnesota’s net.
That’s the patience St. Louis was talking about, and it persisted until nearly halfway through the third period, when defenceman Jayden Struble led a three-one-two rush, lost the puck deep in the Wild zone and, while attempting to get it back, high-sticked Jared Spurgeon for a four-minute penalty.
The Canadiens were three seconds from killing the whole thing off when Marco Rossi shifted through the slot, changed the angle on his shot and beat Samuel Montembeault over the glove to give the Wild a 2-0 lead.
It was a great play made after the Canadiens defended brilliantly for three minutes and 57 seconds.
This team — whose defensive woes have been highly publicized through the first month-and-a-half of the season — was hardly fallible without the puck against the Wild.
“We defended really well,” St. Louis said after the Canadiens allowed just 19 shots (and barely any from the high-danger zone) at five-on-five.
“Defending, for me, is all about attitude,” St. Louis said. “We have structure, but our attitude right now is in the right place.”
If it remains there — and keeping it there is the challenge when one of your better efforts isn’t rewarded just one game after busting out of a long losing streak — the Canadiens will be in the win column more often.
Naturally, they’ll have to generate more chances than they did against the Wild. But that should be achievable because most teams don’t play as tight as the Wild.
St. Louis has that in perspective.
“I’m very happy with the engagement of the players and where we’re headed,” he said.
Not that the coach is unaware of how far the Canadiens need to go to get out of the NHL’s basement.
What’s more important to St. Louis, though, are the steps the Canadiens must take in their process of learning how to win over the remaining 65 games of the season.
They took one in the right direction on Thursday, regardless of the result.
If the Canadiens realize that, it will help them take another one on Saturday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
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