MONTREAL — After the Montreal Canadiens 2-1 shootout win against the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night, Juraj Slafkovský said of himself and his companions on the top line that “we’re maturing.”

If you strip away the playoff aspirations, the desired individual growth, this is the Canadiens’ top goal this season: to mature as a team.

Just about 24 hours later, Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobeš, forced into action on back-to-back nights due to an illness to Sam Montembeault, described the Canadiens’ horrid start to the second period against the St. Louis Blues Sunday in very plain terms.

“Obviously we would want to have that second period start back,” he said. “It’s tough to be up, and then what was it, two or three minutes, and you’re down. That falls on everyone, me, the guys, we just need to have a better start.

“That cannot really happen if we want to play mature hockey.”

Maturity is abstract. There is no one thing that makes a team mature, but Dobeš is correct in stating that a mature team does not go into first intermission with a 2-1 lead and find itself trailing 3-2 a mere 65 seconds into the second period on its way to a 4-2 loss.

But judging maturity based on one minute of immaturity is not a smart way to evaluate that overall goal. The Canadiens’ game Saturday was mature, the Canadiens’ first 65 seconds of the second period Sunday was immature and it cost them. But if you look at the 125 minutes of hockey they played over the weekend, it is difficult not to come away with the sense that the maturing process has progressed.

“I liked the way we played this weekend. I do,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said after the loss to the Blues. “I feel like tonight, you take those two minutes away, we’re probably very happy here.”

The Canadiens entered the weekend back-to-back looking to establish certain norms defensively. They were not happy with their defensive zone play, and hammered down on it at the team hotel in Toronto Saturday morning. The winning goal for the Blues was scored by Pavel Buchnevich off a blown defensive zone coverage by the Canadiens. But should that one breakdown eliminate everything the Canadiens did this weekend to improve in this area?

It should be accounted for, definitely, because as St. Louis loves to say, every play matters, and the Canadiens did not behave like every play matters to start the second. But, again, process is more of a macro view, and from a macro view, the Canadiens’ defensive warts showed improvement over the weekend, or since that meeting at the team hotel in Toronto on Saturday morning.

“I think aside from the start to the second, over these two games defensively we were pretty sharp,” said Lane Hutson, who scored his fifth goal of the season in the first period, one short of his total for all of last season. “We made it easy on each other playing as a unit of five and closing out some plays when we needed it and defending hard.”

Hutson was one of the major positives of the weekend for the Canadiens. As was Slafkovský continuing to assert himself all over the ice, Cole Caufield extending his points streak to 11 games, matching a career high, Alexandre Texier showing himself to be a fine complement to Oliver Kapanen and Ivan Demidov on the second line, Mike Matheson and Noah Dobson getting some swagger back on the top defence pair — with Dobson in particular taking charge offensively Sunday, and not just because he scored — and some of the depth players performing well.

The negatives are largely limited to the Canadiens not taking full advantage of some of their dominant play through 40 minutes of both games to build comfortable leads, being unable to maintain that momentum in the third period of both games, and those 65 seconds to start the second period Sunday.

“Yeah, it was just a pretty terrible start to a period,” Hutson said. “Maybe one of the worst starts all year to a period.”

The positives, overall, outweigh the negatives.

“In terms of the stuff that we’ve been talking about and working on, I feel we’re coming with a heavy forecheck, we get some O-zone time. It would be nice to capitalize on some of our looks. Didn’t give them much, just like last night, but I felt tonight we gave them more quality on our mistakes,” St. Louis said. “But I’m ok with the weekend, with the way we played. It’s just a hard league to get results and we just didn’t get it tonight.

“When you have back-to-back shifts in two minutes like that (at the start of) a period, it’s just hard. We need to capitalize on our chances if you’re going to do that.”

Demidov Deniedov pic.twitter.com/a3sRzXMkmF

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) December 8, 2025

The Canadiens were outscored 3-2 at five-on-five over their two games this weekend, with all three of those goals allowed coming Sunday against the Blues, but otherwise tilted the ice in their direction in both games overall. They combined for an 89-68 edge in shot attempts and earned 59.6 percent of the expected goals in 97 minutes, 32 seconds played at five-on-five in two games.

That does not get cancelled by 65 bad seconds.

“It’s not rocket science, it’s two breakdowns that led to two quick goals, and that was the difference,” Matheson said. “Sometimes you have to give credit to the other team, you’re playing very good players who are going to force you into breakdowns sometimes. To say that they’re not going to happen is impossible.

“We’re doing our best to minimize them. I feel like the last two games we’ve done a pretty good job of that. Keep building and keep working on it.”

This brings us back to Slafkovský’s comment following the game in Toronto on Saturday. He said his line was maturing. Not that they were mature. And that line still applies to the entire team.

We use this only because St. Louis loves using this analogy to describe the progress of his own team and how expectations should be set, but as a child matures, there are learning moments that may seem like a setback in that process. But in fact, what might appear like a setback often serves to advance the maturing process.

The Canadiens need to learn from the 65 immature seconds that cost them the game Sunday, learn that those momentary lapses can’t happen at this level. But they should appreciate the overall progress, too.