MONTREAL – One day before the start of the Montreal Canadiens’ regular season, Juraj Slafkovský was in a reflective mood.
He was determined not to get off to the slow starts that had plagued his young career to that point, he was dialed in on it, his focus was nowhere else but that.
And the reason is that, despite being all of 21, Slafkovský did not want to be seen as a young player, because he was starting his fourth NHL season.
“I feel like the past three years, everyone was just giving me a break, saying I’m still young or whatever,” he said that day. “Well, I’m still young, but I wouldn’t say age matters in this league as much as the experience and the games played.”
Fast forward to Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, a 5-4 overtime loss for the Canadiens in game they had led 3-0 and 4-2.
The Canadiens had just scored to take that 3-0 lead late in the first period on a goal by Jake Evans, and Slafkovský’s line with Oliver Kapanen and Ivan Demidov – two rookies – was sent out for the ensuing faceoff.
Slafkovský is younger than Kapanen, but he has more NHL experience. He is the leader on that line. When Slafkovský attempted a pass to Kapanen at the red line right off the faceoff, the Rangers picked it off and spent the shift in the offensive zone, leading to Lane Hutson’s first penalty of the season.
The Rangers scored on that power play, making it 3-1 before the first intermission.
“I was pissed off about myself yesterday, because I did a couple of plays where I probably could have played it better,” Slafkovský said Sunday night, not specifying which play he was talking about. “It doesn’t guarantee that we would have won, but maybe my game would have helped set up something else. I was pissed after the game, and I just wanted to make sure that it doesn’t happen today.
“If we get up a couple of goals, make sure that we play a mature game. I feel like every game it should be like that.”
The Canadiens were indeed up 3-0 early in the third period against the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday, a lead the Oilers shaved to 3-1 just past the midway point of the third on a power-play goal by Zach Hyman. With 4:43 left in regulation time, coming off a TV timeout with a faceoff to come in the Canadiens’ zone, Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch sent out his nuclear option of Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Vasily Podkolzin, Evan Bouchard and Hyman. Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis countered with Nick Suzuki, Mike Matheson, Noah Dobson and … Kapanen and Slafkovský.
The same two players who combined for that flub one night earlier, the flub that was – in part – responsible for how Slafkovský felt about his game. This time, Slafkovský had an opportunity to ice it into an empty net, and only an excellent effort from McDavid prevented that. But with a little under four minutes left, McDavid had a decent scoring opportunity from the left circle in the Canadiens’ end, and Slafkovský returned the favour. He went down, kicked a leg out and blocked the shot.
Early on in St. Louis’ time as coach of the Canadiens, he compared his team to a child, and made a point of saying you have different expectations based on the age of your child. You don’t expect a 3-year-old to respond to a situation the same way you would expect a 6-year-old or a 9-year-old and so on.
Eventually, he stopped using that analogy. Because, presumably, the Canadiens had reached an age where those expectations would fall short, as they did Saturday night in New York.
St. Louis looked and spoke like a disappointed father after losing a game, one lacking in maturity from his team, against his former team.
But something else St. Louis says often is that development is not linear. He usually says this when referring to a player’s development, but it is equally true of a young team that seeks maturity.
What the last week has made eminently clear is that St. Louis does not like using the youth of his team as an excuse for anything happening to the team. He said as much Wednesday.
Which is what makes signs of immaturity that much more disappointing, because to him, it is not about youth. It is about experience, and this team has some degree of experience with how he is teaching the game to the youngest team in the league.
Again, as Slafkovský made clear before the start of the season, youth is one thing, maturity is something, at least in hockey terms, that is completely different. One is measured in years, the other is measured in experience. One is tangible, the other is a moving target. They are not completely unrelated, but from a coach’s perspective, they are.
There is a way to carry yourself with a commanding lead in the NHL, decisions you need to make to ensure that commanding lead gets you to the finish line. And that decision-making process is going to be top of mind for a coach trying to build a mature team.
The decision-making process was deficient Saturday night in New York because that was a game the Canadiens should have won in regulation time. On Sunday night against the Oilers, it was impeccable.
But it’s worth considering the impact of the loss in New York had on the team’s mentality heading into this challenge against the Oilers, who destroyed the Toronto Maple Leafs one night earlier in Toronto.
“I think what it does, tonight, for me, is you have 20 guys that are going to take care of the team,” St. Louis said. “That’s what I felt. And if it teaches us anything, this non-linear thing, if you constantly have 20 guys that will take care of the team, I think the (number of) dips are lower, and you rise faster.
“That’s my guess, so I think that’s what I’m getting out of this night, this weekend.”
To use an analogy St. Louis has abandoned, the Canadiens are a teenage team right now. Teenagers regularly show signs of maturity, only to have occasional dips, occasional moments of parental disappointment because they felt they had grown beyond that.
Last Sunday, on the first of three straight Saturday-Sunday back-to-backs the Canadiens have this month, we noted how a minute of immaturity in a Sunday loss to the St. Louis Blues should not take away from the increased maturity the Canadiens showed over the weekend.
In the same vein, a game of maturity Sunday cannot completely erase the immaturity shown Saturday in New York.
Immaturity and youth. They are two different things, and they are two different things the Canadiens will need to navigate all season.
They cannot change their youth, but they can change their maturity.
The Canadiens might have shown immaturity Saturday, but they also took five out of six points in their last three games and, perhaps more importantly, showed a capacity to learn from their mistakes.
And ultimately, is that not what maturity is all about?