Hope gaining postseason experience in opener will go a long way
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WASHINGTON — When Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis was asked Tuesday about the performance of some of his young players in their Stanley Cup Playoffs debut, he talked baseball.
“You go to the Major Leagues and the first time you see a 98-mile-an-hour fastball, you’re probably not going to touch it, but eventually you start following it,” St. Louis said. “And the goal for us is to hit singles and doubles. Eventually, I thought we did that in the third (period).”
The Canadiens did lose 3-2 in overtime in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round to the Washington Capitals, but after they rallied from two goals down in the third to send it to overtime, they expect the positives to carry into Game 2 of the best-of-7 series on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, MNMT, SN, TVAS, CBC).
“It was a lot of guys’ first taste of playoff hockey here yesterday, and we’re a young team, but I think our speed and the way we can play kind of took over there in the third,” forward Alex Newhook said. “I think we settled in fine after their first push, and I think we’ll settle in fine in the series and bring a better effort in Game 2.”
The Canadiens, who last played in the postseason in 2021, have seven players in the playoffs for the first time: defensemen Lane Hutson, Kaiden Guhle, Jayden Struble, forwards Juraj Slafkovsky, Emil Heineman, Ivan Demidov and goalie Sam Montembeault. St. Louis said Montreal struggled to execute from the top of the face-off circle to the far blue line early in the game but eventually settled in as the game wore on.
Canadiens at Capitals | Recap | Round 1, Game 1
How much of the initial struggle was nerves or how much of it was the Capitals’ style of play? Afterall, they did finish as the No. 1 seed in the East.
“I think it’s both,” St. Louis said. “I think Washington’s going to keep doing the same thing…they are where they are for a reason, this is a very good hockey team. Did we calm down through that game a little bit? Yes, I think our nerves were better the second half of that game. I hope we can start the game tomorrow, which for a young team I don’t know, but I hope we can start the game in that kind of mindset.
“Just be of a calm mind, understand what Washington is good at just execute through that.”
One thing Washington captain Alex Ovechkin is good at is scoring goals.
The NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer with 897 gave the Capitals a 1-0 lead at 18:34 of the first period, taking a pass from teammate Tom Wilson and scoring a power-play goal on a wrist shot from the top of the left circle.
Anthony Beauvillier made it 2-0 at 12:09 of the second period. Montreal’s Cole Caufield, playing in his 21st postseason game, cut it to 2-1 with a power-play goal at 10:32 of the third period. Captain Nick Suzuki (33 postseason games) tied it at 2-2 at 15:45 before Ovechkin scored his second goal of the game at 2:26 of overtime to give Washington the 1-0 series lead.
MTL@WSH, Gm1: Ovechkin bats in the OT winning goal
St. Louis, who won the Stanley Cup as a player with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004 and appeared in 107 postseason games with the Lightning and New York Rangers, thinks his young players will be calmer now that they have one playoff game under their belts.
“From my own experience I would say ‘yes.’ Now, is that across the board? I don’t know,” he said. “Some guys need more reps than that, not everybody’s the same, not everybody reacts the same. But I feel overall we should. To a man? I don’t know.”
Newhook said he expects Montreal to apply the lessons learned in Game 1 on Wednesday.
“You obviously have to go through some challenges and some adversity with a young group like this in order to reach where you want to get to, and I think we’ve done that a lot this year and I think it’s no different this time of year,” he said. “Now we’ve seen what it’s like and we’ve seen an environment and a Game 1 setting in playoff hockey. We just got to learn how to really settle into that and bring our best next game.”
