{"id":268437,"date":"2025-11-07T08:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T08:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/268437\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T08:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T08:48:08","slug":"canadiens-late-game-process-in-loss-to-devils-provides-valuable-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/268437\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ late-game process in loss to Devils provides valuable lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a game of many quirky bounces, the second-to-last one ultimately cost the Montreal Canadiens<\/a> a point in the standings \u2014 and some bragging rights over the New Jersey Devils, who pulled narrowly ahead of them with a 4-3 overtime win on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Each team now has 20 points through the first 14 games, but it\u2019s the Devils who have eight regulation-time wins to Montreal\u2019s four for first place in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens would\u2019ve been ahead and that gap in regulation wins would\u2019ve narrowed had they not surrendered yet another third-period lead \u2014 this time with 1:07 to go.<\/p>\n

But to suggest this game fell into the same pattern as the four others in which the Canadiens have surrendered third-period leads would be bending the truth.<\/p>\n

Again, it was tied late off a good bounce for the Devils. They took advantage of a six-on-five scenario that turned to six-on-four after Mike Matheson was hobbled from blocking a shot.<\/p>\n

Everything the Canadiens did before that \u2014 after Oliver Kapanen gave them the lead in the 11th minute of the third period \u2014 should give them confidence they can start closing these games out in regulation.<\/p>\n

Coach Martin St. Louis will save the tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that was the best we\u2019ve comported ourselves under those circumstances,\u201d he told reporters at Prudential Center afterwards. \u201cWe frustrated them a bit in the neutral zone. They couldn\u2019t get the plays they wanted. And even at five-on-six, that was the best we\u2019ve played it. We didn\u2019t give them good chances. A puck ends up in the crease and normally we\u2019d get out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matheson was at a deficit to collect it before Timo Meier popped it past Jakub Dobes.<\/p>\n

But not even he can regret how he played that shift.<\/p>\n

His block on Meier 15 seconds earlier was heroic. It was his third and Montreal\u2019s fifth after Kapanen scored. And he and the Canadiens forced three other Devils shots wide while generating three quality scoring chances of their own in between.<\/p>\n

The only puck the Canadiens allowed to get to Dobes before the tying goal was a dribbler from Meier from 41 feet away.<\/p>\n

As St. Louis said, the Canadiens were patient, organized, and defensively committed throughout the game, but certainly in the dying minutes.<\/p>\n

Replicating that should enable them to reverse this early-season trend.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t proven to be particularly costly to date, with a 9-3-2 record keeping the Canadiens out of first place in the conference by a tiebreaker and ahead in the super tight race that\u2019s developed in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n

None of their faults really have proven costly.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens had too many on display in a 5-4 shootout loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday, but they bounced forward against the Devils, even if the outcome was the same after Jesper Bratt stole a pass from Alex Newhook and skated the length of the ice to beat Dobes with New Jersey\u2019s 25th shot.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens played the Devils even at five-on-five and kept their lethal power play to zero goals on five attempts. And though their top line was largely held in check for the first time since Game 1 \u2014 Nick Suzuki\u2019s 12-game point streak ended \u2014 their other three lines delivered.<\/p>\n

The one centred by Kirby Dach got the game\u2019s first quirky bounce when Noah Dobson\u2019s shot hit Dach and floated over Jacob Markstrom and into the net to tie things up 1-1 in the third minute of play.<\/p>\n

But Dach and his linemates earned that bounce on that shift \u2014 and some others they didn\u2019t get with a performance that saw them control 80 per cent of the shot attempts when they were on the ice at five-on-five.<\/p>\n

Newhook assisted on a great play by Kapanen and Ivan Demidov after Jake Evans slipped one through Markstrom in the first minute of the third.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens played their best hockey after that, and then they were undone by some last-minute misfortune.<\/p>\n

Dobes took it harder than expected.<\/p>\n

He was in tears, telling reporters in the room, \u201cI\u2019m just disappointed in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Dobes\u2019 seventh start of the season, his first loss, and it didn\u2019t sit well with him after allowing the game\u2019s first and last shot.<\/p>\n

But Dobes couldn\u2019t have been faulted, either, for the one Meier squeaked in to tie the game late.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to focus on the negative,\u201d said St. Louis, and he was right.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged the Canadiens weren\u2019t perfect, and it went without saying they should be more disciplined.<\/p>\n

But the team should focus on how it played with the lead after earning it because it\u2019ll come out on top much more often in regulation with that recipe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a game of many quirky bounces, the second-to-last one ultimately cost the Montreal Canadiens a point in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-268437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}