NHL
2026 NHL
Trade Deadline
The Canadiens allowed seven goals in a loss to San Jose Tuesday night. Stan Szeto / Imagn Images
SAN JOSE, Calif. — It’s been a long time since we’ve heard Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis use the phrase “shoot ourselves in the foot” as often as he did Tuesday night.
That is a testament to how well the Canadiens have played this season, how they have consistently collected points, even in losses, because they’ve been able to stay in games and avoid the careless errors that lead their coach to use that phrase.
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The Canadiens had gone seven straight games without losing in regulation before repeatedly sabotaging themselves in a 7-5 loss to the San Jose Sharks. They overcame an error-filled second period to erase a 5-2 third period deficit and tie the game, only to turn a puck over in the middle of a line change and get called for too many men on the ice. That led to a Kiefer Sherwood goal with 3:26 to play on the ensuing power play.
“It’s a fine line between winning and losing in this game,” St. Louis said. “You don’t take that too many men on the ice, you take it to overtime and do you win the game? I don’t know. But I feel like we have a collective game to take over games, to dominate games, to come back in games. But sometimes you just shoot yourself in the foot a little too much during the game, and you probably get what you deserve.”
Considering how seldom the Canadiens have done so this season — this was only the 18th time they’ve failed to collect a point in 60 games — having an off night is not a reason to be overly alarmed.
And surely, Canadiens management will not put too much emphasis on this one game as they make their final decisions ahead of Friday’s NHL trade deadline. But there is one element of this game that has become a bit of a common occurrence, not necessarily a one-off
It was exemplified by goaltender Jakub Dobeš taking his stick and whacking the leg of Sharks forward Adam Gaudette with it after Gaudette bumped into him in the crease. The Canadiens had defencemen Mike Matheson and Kaiden Guhle on the ice at the time, and Guhle is of particular interest here.
Opposing forwards feeling comfortable in front of the Canadiens’ net has been a theme of late, and it is something Guhle has wanted the Canadiens defence to prevent dating back to the start of the season.
And yet, it continues happening.
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Before the season, Guhle sat down in the middle of training camp and talked about the nature of the Canadiens defence, how it had a ton of mobility, but maybe a bit less physicality. He wanted to take it upon himself to compensate for that and make life difficult for opposing forwards who ventured in front of the Canadiens’ net.
He spoke of watching the Canadiens reach the 2021 Stanley Cup final with a big, rugged trio of defencemen led by Shea Weber, and how Weber made life miserable for anyone who dared go anywhere near the Canadiens crease.
“We have the ability to have that type of presence,” Guhle said in September. “That’s what I want us to do this year, have that presence where when you step on the ice against our team, you know you’re not going to leave the game without some bumps and bruises.”
Fast-forward to practice in San Jose on Monday, with the Canadiens coming off two games in which the front of their net was full of traffic. They’d faced two heavy teams: the New York Islanders with Anders Lee, and, more symbolically, the Washington Capitals, who knocked them out of last year’s playoffs and taught them a bit of a lesson in the physicality of playoff hockey.
“I think we felt it,” Guhle said Monday. “That was a veteran team in Washington and they’ve played a lot of playoff games before and I think just how detailed they were, they were finishing every hit. They didn’t have to blow you up, but they were getting in your way, they were making it hard for you to jump in the rush.
“I think you watch our forwards too, and how their D defended our forwards in front of the net, it was just really hard for us to get in front of the net. Their goalie had a good series, and I think that was one of the reasons, they were making it hard for our guys to get to the net … I don’t think it was fun for our forwards trying to do that.”
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That lesson has resonated with Guhle. He still wants the Canadiens defence to understand it months after training camp.
“We’ve talked about it as a group and as a D corps and that’s something we want to be; we want players to come into Montreal, or we go to their city, and they know they’ve got this D corps, and they suck to play against, they’re hard to play against,” Guhle said Monday. “Our forwards have talked about D groups on different teams, I’m not going to tell you who, that these guys are not fun to play against.
“I think that’s what we want to do, and we’ve talked about it.”
Guhle was sitting in the visiting locker room after the loss to the Sharks and wasn’t happy. He and Matheson had the assignment to check Macklin Celebrini all night and Celebrini put up a goal and three assists.
A day earlier Guhle was talking about how this is what he gets paid to do, how he relishes the opportunity to shut down the best players in the game. That is what made Celebrini’s masterful performance so hard for him to swallow.
“Not good enough,” Guhle said. “I think it’s our job to keep those guys off the scoresheet, and we didn’t. Credit to him, he’s a good player, but myself, personally, I’ve got to be better defending those guys.”
That’s Guhle being accountable, which is what he does. He and Matheson have been tasked with checking some of the world’s best several times, and they’ve gotten the job done. This one game does not erase that.
But the burden Guhle feels to make the Canadiens defence hard to play against, as well as a group opposing forwards dread facing because of the physical toll it will take to get to the front of the net, should not fall on Guhle alone. Jayden Struble and Arber Xhekaj are the other defencemen who fit that profile, but only one of them is in the lineup at a time, and Struble played a team-low 8:47 against the Sharks.
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It’s one game, but it was the Canadiens’ final one before the deadline hits at 3 p.m. ET on Friday. The Canadiens’ entire management team is on this trip, including a number of pro scouts and their head of analytics. Everyone is on hand to make the most clear-eyed decisions ahead of the deadline.
Should this one game impact their decision-making? No.
Should the continued trend of not making opposing forwards’ lives difficult enough in front of their net? Perhaps.
Captain Nick Suzuki and Guhle himself have publicly campaigned for Canadiens management to keep the group intact, and their reasons for doing so are valid. The Canadiens are five points clear of the top non-playoff team in the East and have scored more goals than any team in the conference.
But they have also allowed more than all but two teams in the East, and outscoring your deficiencies is generally not a formula for playoff success. Allowing seven against the Sharks surely did not alleviate that source of concern for Canadiens management. It definitely didn’t for Guhle.
The defence corps he has hoped the Canadiens would have since September has yet to materialize.
“Those games can’t happen,” Guhle said. “You can’t let in seven and expect to win a game.”
Management is not prepared to be reckless in looking for a solution to what is a short-term problem this week. And they shouldn’t be.
But the taste of this game will linger through Friday’s deadline, and it is at least worth wondering if that sour taste will spur some action.
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Arpon Basu has been the editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montréal since 2017. Previously, he worked for the NHL for six years as managing editor of LNH.com and a contributing writer on NHL.com. Follow Arpon on Twitter @ArponBasu
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