{"id":939031,"date":"2026-10-24T07:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T07:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939031\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T07:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T07:58:09","slug":"centres-stabilize-canadiens-in-first-game-without-suzuki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939031\/","title":{"rendered":"Centres stabilize Canadiens in first game without Suzuki"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 It was on Friday afternoon that Montreal Canadiens<\/a> coach Martin St. Louis said something specific to Oliver Kapanen<\/a> that applied to all four of the centres he\u2019d later depend on in a 4-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Oliver understands that hockey is not a one-on-one game,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cIt\u2019s a team game; it\u2019s a collective game with one-on-one moments. I don\u2019t think Kappy\u2019s a guy who\u2019s searching for these one-on-one moments. I think he respects the rules of the game, the collective game on both sides of the puck, and I think that allows him to help the team on both sides and continue the actions, continue the offensive plays. He\u2019s very predictable for his teammates\u2026 Wherever Kappy\u2019s on the ice, and whether he\u2019s going to touch it or whether he\u2019s going to come back towards our zone, I know exactly what he\u2019s going to do because he understands the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

So does Phillip Danault<\/a>, who\u2019s so far centred a line that, coming into Friday\u2019s game, was tops in the NHL in expected-goals percentage among lines to have played at least 65 minutes together.<\/p>\n

Alex Newhook<\/a> also understands the rules of the collective game and constantly plays by them, centring what\u2019s become another strong line with Josh Anderson and Chris Kreider. And Jake Evans<\/a>, who scored two goals and added an assist in the win over the Blackhawks, rarely, if ever, breaks those rules.<\/p>\n

None of them \u2014 not Evans, Newhook, Danault nor Kapanen \u2014 are nearly as dynamic as Nick Suzuki (a 100-point centre whose Selke Trophy win last season validated his status as one of the top defensive forwards in hockey), but all of them are as predictable as he is by the definition St. Louis provided. So, with the onus on all of them to step up in Suzuki\u2019s two-to-four-week absence with an upper-body injury, all they have to do is be themselves to collectively replace Suzuki.<\/p>\n

So far, so good. Even if it was against this lowly Blackhawks team, which fell to 3-7-0 Friday.<\/p>\n

That shouldn\u2019t diminish what the 5-3-2 Canadiens did in their first game without their captain, though, especially coming off a third game in the last week in which they blew a third-period, two-goal lead.<\/p>\n

After spotting the Blackhawks a 1-0 lead on a broken play \u2014 Juraj Slafkovsky attempted dump-in bounced off the linesman\u2019s skate and sent Connor Bedard in on an odd-man rush that he finished with his patented shot \u2014 Evans put himself in the spot Kirby Dach would expect him to be in to score the equalizer.<\/p>\n

That was one of the first samples in this game of his predictability, which enabled the collective game St. Louis expects will carry the Canadiens through the adversity they\u2019re facing without Suzuki.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always talk about balance on the ice, offensive balance,\u201d he said. \u201cYou look at the first goal, that goal happens because of the balance that we have. It goes bang, bang, bang. The predictability of where guys are going to be \u2014 when the guy\u2019s in space, he knows his first look, (and) that\u2019s where it\u2019s going to go. And if he doesn\u2019t like it, he\u2019s got other options. It helps you to continue. It doesn\u2019t guarantee you\u2019re going to get the looks, but you can continue to have that predictability.”<\/p>\n

The Canadiens closed out this game by remaining in balance both with the puck and without it. Thanks to that balance, they notched 12 of their 41 five-on-five shot attempts on the night in the third period while limiting the Blackhawks to only eight of their 25. They made smart, effective, and predictable plays to buck their most troubling trend of late, and they did it all without their most reliable player.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t really remember one play in that third period that could\u2019ve hurt us,\u201d said Evans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He accurately called the hooking penalty Juraj Slafkovsky took with just over six minutes remaining \u201ca fringe call.\u201d And thankfully for the Canadiens, it didn\u2019t cost them, with Chicago\u2019s Teuvo Teravainen wiping out his team\u2019s power play just 18 seconds later.<\/p>\n

Then Mike Matheson, in his return from a four-game absence with a lower-body injury, scored into an empty net to put a stamp on a complete team win.<\/p>\n

Evans played excellently in it. He drove his line to a 7-2 advantage in shot attempts and scored at five-on-five. He also assisted on Kaiden Guhle\u2019s first goal of the season after scoring one of his own shorthanded. And he played just under a minute less than Danault, who had an assist and finished plus-2 in 18:09 against the team that took him in the first round of the 2011 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n

Newhook didn\u2019t hit the scoresheet, but he drove his line to an 8-5 shot-attempt advantage. And while Kapanen finished minus-1 because of that unlucky bounce off the linesman, he played as expected in Suzuki\u2019s spot next to Slafkovsky and Cole Caufield.<\/p>\n

He played like his predictable self.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when you\u2019re playing with top guys, you can sometimes try and change your game to find them in spots, and I think he just played his game and helped them out,\u201d said Evans. “Hopefully Nick\u2019s not out too long, but if Kappy\u2019s there playing with them I think he\u2019s just going to get better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a player who put up 22 goals and 37 points as a rookie, a player who missed the first 18 days of the season with a knee injury, you can expect Kapanen\u2019s offence to pick up.<\/p>\n

His all-around game is in a good place. Same goes for Danault, Newhook and Evans.<\/p>\n

All four of them are predictable and reliable, giving St. Louis the ability to deploy them against any player at either end of the ice in any situation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exactly what he needs in Suzuki\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 It was on Friday afternoon that Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said something specific to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-939031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939031","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=939031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}