Canadiens dominate – The Montreal Canadiens opened the Eastern Conference Final with a 6-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, putting their quick, detailed game-planning on full display after limited preparation. Captain Nick Suzuki praised the effort, while Carolina coa
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Canadiens barely had time to breathe before they were asked to learn a whole new opponent.
After winning Game 7 in Buffalo. they had just 72 hours to turn around for the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes. At least six of those were spent travelling, while another 21, give or take, were spent sleeping. Still, Montreal looked like a team that had already memorized the answers.
Captain Nick Suzuki said the Canadiens had a long meeting Wednesday, one more Thursday morning, and one last one before Thursday’s game to absorb the intelligence their coaching staff had gathered. The payoff was immediate: a 6-2 win in Game 1 at the Lenovo Center.
“It shows the maturity of our team. ” said Phillip Danault. who has played the second-most playoff games of anyone on the Canadiens. Danault is 33, but most of his teammates are between 20 and 26. For them, the last 14 games of these playoffs have been some of the most formative of their blossoming careers.
The series got its first real crack on the Canadiens’ side early in the opening period. Mike Matheson buckled under the Hurricanes’ pressure and fired a puck up the wall of his own zone. Andrei Svechnikov picked it off. fed it to Seth Jarvis. and Jarvis scored for a 1-0 Carolina lead just 33 seconds in.
That play became a reminder of how quickly this series could turn. Yet the Canadiens still controlled the period, ending up ahead 4-1. One of the reasons they seemed so prepared was exactly what happened on that wall in their own zone. It was among the points of emphasis St. Louis and his staff drove home after their scouting work began 12 days earlier. following Carolina’s sweep of the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Canadiens were up 92.9 per cent of the time exiting their zone in control of the puck through the opening period.
St. Louis described the approach simply. “You’ve gotta be careful trying to give so much information to players at a time,” he said. “You’ve gotta pick a couple things and trying to address that, and that’s what we did.”
Even when Carolina pushed back in Period 2, Montreal bent without breaking. The Canadiens still managed to exit cleanly 56 per cent of the time. and they kept generating rush chances to extend their lead. Cole Caufield. who scored 27 seconds after Jarvis to tie the game in the first. hit the post on one of those early second-period rushes. Eric Robinson then countered to cut Montreal’s lead to 4-2.
But the Canadiens’ control wasn’t only about handling the neutral zone. Even after the puck mismanagement in the neutral zone during the rest of the second period, they found a way to absorb the chaos Carolina brought in their own zone.
“I thought we defended really well,” St. Louis said.
“We weathered the storm,” Danault added.
Then Montreal tightened everything down. In the third period. Juraj Slafkovsky bookended perfectly-calculated plays from the Canadiens through the final 13 minutes with goals that pushed the game further out of reach. The Hurricanes, despite their “shoot-from-everywhere” approach, were held to one shot on net.
For Carolina, the result didn’t come with many hiding places. Brind’Amour said his team didn’t look ready.
“They made some nice plays, give them credit. They finished,” he said. “But I didn’t think we were very sharp, to put it bluntly. Our top guys had a tough night. and that’s not going to work this time of year… I think we just toss this game. to be honest. I hate that at this time of year that’s what we’ve gotta do. but there wasn’t much to grab onto there. I think if you get behind early like that. it’s tough. but we clearly were not ready for that pace. I’m not going to give the (12-day) layoff as an excuse. but we weren’t ready to play playoff hockey and that caught us.”.
Montreal’s coach had already framed what it would take to survive the momentum swings of this stage of the playoffs.
Earlier on Thursday, St. Louis said he “thought” the Canadiens understood how hard they needed to defend to win games at this time of year. “I think we’ve learned that. yes. we’re gonna lose momentum. but we can’t get hurt so much. we can’t break. ” he added. “We’re gonna bend, but we can’t break. I think we’ve done a good job of that. I think we’ve learned how important (it is) that we’ve gotta
keep playing. Whether we’re up a goal. two goals. you’ve gotta keep playing. and it’s a hard thing to do when you’re playing against really good teams. in the sense that they bring their game. too. And sometimes the situation can overwhelm you. and you’ve just got to grab a hold of it and have poise and be confident that you can flip it again and go get that momentum…”.
St. Louis said the Canadiens carried lessons forward from their Game 1 loss to Buffalo too—lessons that weren’t handed to them by the coaching staff in the same way the Carolina scouting report was.
“It’s probably something I didn’t see,” he said. “The group felt after Game 1 in Buffalo that. emotionally. we weren’t where we needed to be if you compare it to the Tampa series. It’s not something that I personally felt because I’m not in the dressing room for that long. I come in, speak to the team, but I’m not in there. My guess is they handled that because that’s their own perception. They’re in the locker room, they know what they see and feel. My guess is they handled that on their own. As a coach, you don’t have to control everything. You have to lean on your group, your leaders and stuff, and they must have done that.”.
That kind of response, in St. Louis’s view, is what young teams do as they come of age.
The Canadiens didn’t just win. They did it with a prepared plan and timely execution from their top line. Through the first two rounds, their top line had been outscored 10-3 at five-on-five. In Thursday’s opening test of the third round, they combined for two goals at even-strength and one at five-on-six.
Suzuki summed up the feeling simply after the final buzzer.
“It was great by everyone,” he said.
Carolina now faces a steep task: they were handed their first adversity in months. The Canadiens, meanwhile, are already shifting from the celebration to the next question.
Jake Evans said class is back in session until Saturday night. “I think there’s a lot of learning and chatting with each other to figure out what the best plan of action is for Game 2,” he said.
If Montreal applies what it learned and discussed, it will get another chance to return to the Bell Centre with a lead in the series.
Canadiens Hurricanes Eastern Conference Final Game 1 Nick Suzuki Phillip Danault Juraj Slafkovsky Rod Brind'Amour Martin St. Louis Seth Jarvis Cole Caufield Andrei Svechnikov