SEATTLE — It was a play that perfectly encapsulated the challenge this Montreal Canadiens team is likely to face at various points of this season, one where they want to compete for a playoff spot but still need to develop young players.
They had three rookies in their lineup Tuesday night against the Seattle Kraken, they have the youngest roster in the league by a fair margin, and those young players have a lot of learning to do. But they also need to allow the Canadiens to compete at the same time, and they did that Tuesday with a 4-3 overtime win sealed by Cole Caufield’s league-leading third overtime goal of the season.
For roughly the first 50 minutes of the game, the Canadiens were in complete control. They were not allowing the Kraken much space, much of anything, and a big reason why that was the case was the play of defenceman Jayden Struble.
Struble began the season seemingly stuck behind Arber Xhekaj in the team’s pecking order on the blue line, and he refused to sweat it. He was not getting first-team reps in training camp, and he didn’t sweat it. He was not getting a look on special teams — and still isn’t — and he didn’t sweat it.
He knew his opportunity would come, and what was most important was he be ready to seize it when it did.
LA FEINTE
Stone Cole’d 🥶#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/YFmN7B81jC
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) October 29, 2025
That chance arrived when Kaiden Guhle was injured Oct. 16 against the Nashville Predators, just five games into the season. And Struble has indeed seized that opportunity and has successfully passed Xhekaj on the depth chart.
When coach Martin St. Louis was asked repeatedly about Xhekaj’s diminishing ice time in recent games, he took responsibility for it and stated he would try to get Xhekaj into a better rhythm by getting him more minutes early in games. But he also laid out the situation in more practical terms.
“We have a lot of defencemen ahead of him right now who are forcing us to give them more,” St. Louis said.
It’s rather obvious that Mike Matheson, Noah Dobson, Lane Hutson and Alexandre Carrier are going to get more than Xhekaj. The one that stands out in the group St. Louis was referring to was Struble, because he was seemingly behind Xhekaj from the very start of training camp, and this was tangible evidence that, in the eyes of the coaching staff, Struble was now ahead of him.
This is what a young, rebuilding team wants.
And on Tuesday, Struble was playing perhaps his best game of the season. It was evident right from the start when on his first shift, Seattle rookie Berkly Catton tried to squeeze by Struble with the puck along the boards, and Struble simply eliminated him physically. He did this over and over again to anyone who tried the same thing.
And then, with a 3-0 lead in the third period, Struble made a mistake.
He skated the puck up the ice and saw an opportunity to get the puck to Juraj Slafkovský. The fact he was even on the ice with Slafkovský that late in the game shows how well he had been playing. But that was not the play to make in this situation.
“I think we as a whole have got to clean that up. I’ve got to clean that up,” Struble said. “It was just a bad play. I thought I saw Slaf kind of and I thought, ‘I’ll try to feather one in there.’ That’s not really my game. Just put the puck deep and live to fight another day. I thought I had a good game up until then. And then, the boys, obviously they came back. You have star players like that to pick us up when we’re down.”
Struble turned the puck over and took a hooking penalty as a result. The Kraken scored on the ensuing power play.
mr. montour from downtown 🚨 pic.twitter.com/ezuLQlZ0lh
— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) October 29, 2025
Seattle scored again at four-on-four and scored again at six-on-five. Three goals in 9:20 to turn a 3-0 Canadiens lead into a tie game.
As soon as Struble returned to the bench after the first Kraken goal, St. Louis went over to him. He had one question.
Why?
Why would he do that with the Canadiens up 3-0 and 12 minutes left?
“He was like, no numerical advantage, get it deep,” Struble said. “He was right.”
The contrast between what Struble had accomplished in this game and how bad that one play was is exactly the challenge St. Louis and the Canadiens face this season. It’s not enough to show progress, to show development the way Struble has ever since Guhle went down, the way he did throughout that game to that point.
“There’s way more positive than negative with Strubes tonight. He was very good, until that,” St. Louis said. “I think that snowballed a little bit of the rest of the game. We’re going to talk about it.
‘There’s learning moments there for him and for everybody. He was the one, but other guys are going to be in that situation. So can we learn from someone’s actions?”
The Canadiens are 8-3-0 after 11 games and have the most wins in the league. But only four of them have come in regulation time, and regulation wins are the first tie-breaker in the standings. At the end of the season, it’s entirely possible this win coming in overtime instead of regulation time could be the difference between making and missing the playoffs.
That is the standard the Canadiens are living under this season. And that is why Struble initially said after the game he will think about that one play more than about his performance up to that point.
But within minutes, he realized that was the wrong way to see it.
“When I’m playing my game, like in those first two periods, I think it’s hard to find a fault there,” Struble said. ‘I think I’m being simple, I’m killing everything. I think I’m really effective when I’m playing my game. Just kind of more of the same.
“I don’t want to let that one play hinder anything. We got the win, and move on.”
St. Louis always says he coaches trends more than one-offs. In Vancouver on Saturday, the Canadiens built a two-goal lead in the third and spent the rest of the period hemmed in their zone, giving up one goal at six-on-five but ultimately holding on. In Edmonton the game prior, while questionable officiating definitely played a part, the Canadiens were ahead 5-3 midway through the third period and lost 6-5 in regulation. And so, following those two games, blowing a three-goal lead in the final 12 minutes of regulation Tuesday counts as a trend.
“I always say, winning takes what it takes,” St. Louis said. “It doesn’t guarantee it either, but when you understand that and have the actions to support what we’re trying to do … we’ve got to be better at doing those.”
In prior seasons, Struble’s excellent play of late would be the story. It would overshadow that penalty and the Canadiens’ third-period meltdown. And perhaps it should still be the story, because in the big picture, Struble’s improvement will help this team reach its goal of returning to the playoffs.
But the Canadiens are attempting to straddle a delicate line this season of developing and winning all at once, and while they won this game, they did not do so in a mature way.
Prior to the opening game of the season, St. Louis was asked about the youth of his team, the challenges that youth would present while they try to compete for the playoffs.
“Yes, we’re young, but we have experience,” he said that morning in Toronto. “Our youth has experience, it’s not like they’re new to the league. We’re in a stage where we’re more advanced, we want to keep evolving as a team. Our youth, I don’t think it’s a weakness. I almost see it as an advantage.”
Struble’s immature moment did not cost the Canadiens two points Tuesday, and it did not erase all the good he had done in the game prior to that, or even in the games prior to that. But it was a further demonstration of how hard it can be to compete when you have the youngest team in the NHL.
Of how, on some nights, it is a disadvantage.