One look at the scoresheet revealed why the Montreal Canadiens busted their six-losing streak and got their first win in the month of November.
It read: Goals 11 and 12 for Cole Caufield, who took the NHL lead in the category, two goals and two assists for Nick Suzuki, three assists for Juraj Slafkovsky, two assists for Lane Hutson, two assists for Kirby Dach and one assist for Mike Matheson.
Josh Anderson, Christian Dvorak, Brendan Gallagher, Emil Heineman and Joel Armia all collected points as well, but this 7-5 win for the Canadiens over the Buffalo Sabres was delivered by their best players.
We wrote they were their worst in a 4-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday, but they rebounded in Monday’s matinee — not only in finding the back of the net to bust out of individual slumps, but also in doing so at key moments.
“Our top guys played the game,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis told reporters at Key Bank Center afterwards.
He wasn’t asked about No. 1 goaltender Samuel Montembeault, who did his part, too, relieving Cayden Primeau after the Canadiens turned a 4-3 third-period lead into a 5-4 deficit.
Montembeault made timely saves to keep his team within reach before Hutson did most of the dirty work to extend play in the Sabres zone and set up Heineman for the tying goal with 9:09 to play.
Then Slafkovsky and Caufield connected on the winner with 17 seconds remaining in Rasmus Dahlin’s two-minute minor for elbowing Jake Evans.
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Suzuki relieved the pressure — and the Canadiens — busting up a play in his own end while the Sabres were pushing to tie the game with an extra attacker on the ice. He might have lost his footing down the ice and missed out on his first NHL hat trick, but he still made the key play on the goal Dvorak scored to ensure the win.
“It’s a big building block for our team moving forward,” said Caufield.
We’ll find out if that proves true, after the Canadiens blew two leads within seconds of notching them before blowing a third at the start of the final period.
It’ll take more than the way they rebounded to close out this game to show the fragility borne of gaffe-laden losses has been repaired.
But there’s no denying what Monday’s performance should do for the confidence of the players counted on to carry Montreal to better results than they’ve earned so far this season.
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Suzuki’s confidence was admittedly cratering through four games without a point, as he notched only one shot on net in each of those losses and made uncharacteristic mistakes that led to several goals against.
Caufield’s confidence wasn’t exactly soaring over the same stretch, and Dach’s appeared to have bottomed out after failing to hit the scoresheet throughout the entire losing streak.
For Matheson, who’s been nursing an upper-body injury, insult was added over the five games prior to Monday’s, as he was held without a point and found himself on the ice for eight more goals than the Canadiens scored at even strength.
Slafkovsky was insulting himself before the Canadiens lost to the Calgary Flames, New Jersey Devils and Leafs last week.
“There’s so many things I could tell you about myself that I’m not doing right at the time,” he said to us last Monday, before continuing to do them wrong over the next three games.
But Slafkovsky did some fundamental things right against the Sabres — namely keeping his feet moving and not allowing the puck to die on his stick.
The 20-year-old’s setups were all a function of that, enabling him to be a key contributor to this win.
All of Montreal’s best players gave their team the boost it desperately needed.
“It was as if the boys said: ‘We’ve had enough,’” said St. Louis.
Any more would’ve been intolerable for them.
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The mood was particularly heavy around the Canadiens following Saturday’s game.
With the way Monday’s game went, it probably wasn’t lightened until Dvorak gave the team a two-goal cushion with 49 seconds remaining.
Now, all the Canadiens’ top guys should be feeling a bit better about themselves, which is essential ahead of Thursday’s game against a Minnesota Wild team that’s accumulated the NHL’s third-best record (10-2-3).
“Hopefully we can get on a little bit of a roll,” said Dach.
At 5-9-2, there’s no time like the present.
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