It’s the third game that the trend really takes off in a series. After two games that felt each other out, it is in the third game that the coaches have made their adjustments and the series begins to settle in a place that will likely end. Not always with the result, but, at least, the tenor of the game.
The third game was an exciting and competitive first game. In overtime, the Hurricanes won 3-2.
Wild horses
The Hurricanes are a very talented team, but they are a soft team. When the Panthers beat them in the final five playoff games, they just weren’t ready to take the hits Florida threw at them. The way to beat Carolina is through them. The Buffalo Sabers would have been a matchup the Hurricanes would have hated.
The problem for the Canadians is that the referee is soft too. It’s completely different from the Sabers and Lightning series. Bodies and punches flew in those series, and in most cases, it took a kill to call a penalty.
Montreal is trying to be physical and get into the mud a bit, but they are getting frequent penalties called for extracurricular activities that seemed to be encouraged in the first two rounds. Now a light face wash takes two minutes as the league sets a completely different standard.
I’m not sure the Canadians bring enough muscle on their own in their current build, but the shot is still recommended. It was a strong prediction that brought the first goal. Alex Newhook won the blue line. Jake Evans followed in the corner. Ivan Demidov took over from there. Demidov made a perfect feed to a charging Mike Matheson, who sent it upstairs for his second of the playoffs.
The Canadians tied it in the second half with a breathtaking goal from two young superstars. On the power play, it was Lane Hutson to Cole Caufield to Hutson to Caufield to Hutson and an open net. The first pass was in their zone. The last pass was two meters from Frederik Andersen.
Andersen left the net open so far and looked like he picked up his second assist of the game. Indeed, it was the other goalkeeper who got the second assist, Jakub Dobes.
In the goaltending battle, as it has been throughout this playoff, Dobes had the upper hand. He was asked to make an absolutely incredible number of saves as he continued to bring his Goal Saves above expectations in these playoffs well ahead of his closest rival.
On the other hand, Andersen looked scared. The telltale sign of anxiety in a goalkeeper is whether they can catch 50 feet. It’s the arms that are least reliable when anxiety strikes. Andersen was whizzing by on the 50-footer at 50 miles per hour on the throw.
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 hadn’t felt before playing with Montreal. A number around .800 is usually not good enough. His goals-against-save is a miserable negative 3.5. Its opposite dobes is plus 1.9.
Wild goats
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One of the ways the Canadiens were supposed to be more effective than the Hurricanes was a battle of the quarterbacks. Carolina built what most teams do in their quarterbacks — 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 to be talented. The truth is, in a cap world, on the fourth line, CEOs are out of money. In the first two rounds, the fourth line did not score for the Hurricanes.
Against the Canadians, they are winning the battle of the fourth lines in a big way. Robinson has two goals, and in the third it was the work of Jankowski and Carrier that led to Shayne Gostisbehere’s tally. Kirby Dach and Zachary Bolduc are supposed to win this battle.
However, they lack a center. Oliver Kapanen could not find his way in the highest intensity of the playoffs. Joe Veleno is in and out of the lineup trying to make a difference. Montreal is short a center, and therefore, right now, they are short in a must-win battle.
The best playoff line for the Hurricanes has been Logan Stankoven with center Taylor Hall and Jackson Blake. For two games, they were shut out. Phillip Danault’s line took over in the first period to stop them, but they counted on a Hall comeback.
The Hurricanes were a flood zone, being first to the puck, winning puck battles and generally getting as stuffed as they could. It’s not a particularly talented team, but they play talented throughout the lineup. Their front line hasn’t done anything in the playoffs, but they only have one loss.
A lot more teams have a lot more talent than this one, and they’ve all already been eliminated from the playoffs. A large number of Hurricanes were rejected by other clubs for not being good enough.
Gostisbehere was placed on waivers by the Flyers. The New York Rangers got rid of 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 Hurricanes management botched the Mikko Rantanen deal so badly, not realizing that Rantanen wanted no part of the North Carolina native on a long-term contract. Jalen Chatfield is such a master that he didn’t even become a regular NHL pro until he was 27 years old. Their starting goaltender Frederik Andersen has been dumped like a sack.
What is the common denominator of this group that should not be so good? They play for Rod Brind’Amour. They are definitely not even close to the most talented roster, but they might be the best.
Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis has been outstanding in adjusting to the mid-series changes against Jon Cooper and Lindy Ruff. He’s now facing a slightly more organized force than every single player Brind’Amour throws on the boards.
There is no missing link on this roster that makes their opponent feel like they have too many men on the ice. Expected goals were 3.01 to 1.45 for Carolina after regulation time. The Canadians seemed to switch strategies in the third period from turning the game into a high defense to catching a forward attack for a quick turnaround.
It might not lead to much offense, but, at this point, the Montreal coach is simply looking to not defend as much.
The Canadiens went to a seventh overtime in these playoffs in their 17th game. The effort for the Canadiens has been the most difficult in these playoffs. No other team has gone 17. No other team has gone seven overtimes. It will be a massive challenge to beat an Atlantic Division power for one, and then a quiet Carolina team for another.
The Hurricanes won it on an Andrei Svechnikov shot that Sebastian Aho deflected and controlled Dobes. That’s two overtime wins for Carolina and a 3-4 overtime record for Montreal.
Wilde Cards
General manager Kent Hughes has made 42 trades in his four years at the helm of the Montreal Canadiens. He probably only took a loss on one of those trades, and even that trade he saved in the end. One of his first moves was sending Artturi Lehkonen to the Colorado Avalanche for first-round pick Justin Barron.
The reason Hughes made that trade is that he didn’t imagine his rebuild would be so successful that he could use Lehkonen in a playoff push. He didn’t think Lehkonen would have any career left by the time the Canadiens he was developing were ready to contend.
However, with the second fastest ‘playoff bottom’ rebuild this century behind only the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Canadiens have already achieved Finals four success. Still, the Canadiens won’t be losing too much sleep over the Lehkonen deal, considering Barron’s eventual trade for Alexandre Carrier.
One of the important skills of a GM is that they have a sense of when a player has stopped leveling up. That’s when the value is known, and if that value isn’t high enough, then they have to cut the player before other general managers around the league also see that the player has declined.
That’s what Hughes did perfectly with his 34th trade on December 18, 2024. He felt Barron wouldn’t live up to the promise he showed when he was drafted so high. Barron hasn’t improved his game since the trade. He’s averaging 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 throughout the game, and he plays with a tremendous amount of courage.
It seemed like an odd trade for a rebuilding team to trade a young player for someone six years his senior. However, if one player has limited future value, and the other can help the lineup for the next five years, it doesn’t really matter what stage a rebuild is in.
The key to success is assessment. They say hindsight is 20/20, but it often seems like Hughes and his band have seen the future. By getting a reliable defender on the right side, the Canadiens made a big move towards their current success.
A year later they got Noah Dobson for right wing as well. 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 IN globalnews.ca after every Canadiens game.
