Three games in four nights on the road is a challenging start to an NHL season, especially when all three games are the home openers of the opposition. After a loss in Toronto, and an impressive win in Detroit, the Montreal Canadiens wrapped up in Chicago.
The Blackhawks would be highly motivated looking for their first win of the year after two defeats. It was a poorly played game, but poor or not, one team has to win, and it was the Canadiens. In the last minute, it was Kaiden Guhle who won it with a point shot.
The Canadiens head home for their opener Tuesday night against Seattle with four points out of a possible six.
Wilde Horses
There was little to like in the Canadiens first period, but one moment stood out as outstanding. Ivan Demidov was worthy of high praise, but not in the manner that you would expect. Demidov saw a developing breakaway for the Blackhawks and he skated at full speed the length of the ice to break up the play.
Demidov has a lot of skills that are world class, but his skating isn’t his top skill by any means. In fact, before the draft, many scouts actually indicated that they thought his skating was subpar, and a weakness. Watching Demidov close 25 feet on his opponent, to suggest his skating is a weakness is laughable.
Demidov stopped the breakaway with ease. Head Coach Martin St. Louis has to love that moment. He knows that if Demidov is going to be the super star that he has the potential to be, he must be strong defensively as well.
What a story Zach Bolduc is becoming for the Canadiens this season. With 13 goals in his last 26 games for the St. Louis Blues, GM Kent Hughes must have felt that this was a player about to breakout. At 22 years of age, it is often when it happens in the third season.
Bolduc won a Memorial Cup for the Quebec Remparts. He knows winning, and he knows 50-goal seasons with two in juniors. He may not hit 50 goals in the NHL, but his ceiling may be higher than the Blues ever thought when they let him go for Logan Mailloux.
With Bolduc’s power play goal pouncing on a rebound of a Cole Caufield shot, he counted his third goal of the season in three games. Bolduc is the leading goal scorer on the club which no one could have expected. It’s looking like an outstanding trade.
He was a first round draft pick taken 17th overall. Some level of success should have been expected, but this is starting to feel bigger. This may be a big trade win to make the Canadiens a much better team. Bolduc is delivering.
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It was a night filled with penalties. Most were taken by the Blackhawks. Montreal had nine power plays in the first two periods, and though they scored twice, they were largely ineffective. Cole Caufield counted his first of the season batting a puck out of the air.
The Canadiens won it with 17 seconds left. Montreal had huge pressure with the Suzuki line, Lane Hutson, and Kaiden Guhle making nothing but excellent decisions leaving the Hawks in disarray. Goalie Spencer Knight lost his stick. That would be the deciding factor.
Guhle took a point shot that hit the goalie stick lying in front of the crease. The puck jumped two feet higher past Knight. All the pressure created a lucky moment.
It was a frustrating contest. Not all games are Picassos, but good teams win the ones that you don’t hang on the wall too.
Wilde Goats
It’s very early, so any criticism needs to be tempered somewhat because the sample size just isn’t big enough, but the Canadiens are going to need a little bit more from Samuel Montembeault soon.
Montreal’s number one goalie turned in an .880 in his first game when the Canadiens lost to the Maple Leafs. He got the second night off in Detroit, so Jakub Dobes could turn in a .968 save percentage in his only contest.
This is Montembeault’s fifth season for the Canadiens. His top mark is a .903 in all of that time.
If the Canadiens are going to be upper echelon, it might be that they need more than that. Montembeault’s goals saved above expected has been solid over the years, so he does make a difference many nights. However, it would be fair to say that he needs to be more consistent in more games.
Also, it has to be only a matter of time before the Canadiens change their power play units to a powerful first unit and a much less powerful second unit, instead of trying to spread the strength all around. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before a manpower decision is made that sees Demidov get more ice time.
Wilde Cards
The night before the NHL draft in 2024, the Canadiens made what seemed like a fairly insignificant trade moving up only five spots to 21st overall. They had their hearts set on a player they felt would be available at that spot.
As the selection approached, another player ranked as high as three only a few months before had kept on falling. The hockey world thought that Cole Eiserman might just fall into their laps as a coup for Montreal. The Canadiens didn’t care. They felt that Michael Hage was the answer to their second line centre problem.
Fast forward 16 months. Hage is everything that the Canadiens scouting staff had hoped for. In his first college season, on a poor Michigan team, Hage led all 18-year old forwards in points-per-game. More than that, he was determined to learn how to be an NHL centre understanding and embracing the concepts of complete hockey. He wanted to not just be a scorer, but to be a 200-foot player.
This season, Hage is off to an even hotter start than last year. In his freshman campaign, Hage had 34 points in 33 games. That’s a big number. Early in this campaign, Hage is crushing that number.
Hage has played four games for the Wolverines as their biggest talent in the line-up. He is racking up the totals. With his two goals Friday night in Michigan’s 5-1 win over Providence, Hage now has four goals and five assists for nine points.
This points-per-game would be among the highest in this era, though a lot of hokey remains. The obscene totals like 100 points in 39 games for Paul Kariya in the high scoring 1980s will not ever be reached again, but in this era, the numbers of Hage are exceptional.
The opportunity to shine is increased playing on a strong club. The Friars were seventh ranked nationally heading into Friday’s contest, and the ninth ranked Wolverines crushed them, and that was in Rhode Island. They played again on Saturday and the Wolverines won again 3-1. Michigan will be ranked top-five in the country with their sweep of a top-ten club on the road.
While the Canadiens are desperate to fill that second line centre role, and it seems as if the solution will never come, it will. Hage will play his sophomore season in Michigan. He will likely earn a spot playing for Canada at the World Juniors this Christmas. Next year, seasoning in Laval, then a planned date with Ivan Demidov on the second line.
It’s not often that a team targets a player specifically as late as 21 in the draft, but the Canadiens had a target, and they hit the bullseye with Hage.
Brian Wilde, a Montreal-based sports writer, brings you Call of the Wilde on globalnews.ca after each Canadiens game.
