MONTREAL— It was supposed to be Sid the Kid’s night, but it belonged to the kids on the Montreal Canadiens instead.

The one most responsible for keeping Sidney Crosby from recording his 1723rd point to tie Mario Lemieux for eighth on the all-time scoring list, and move him to within one point of becoming the highest-scoring Pittsburgh Penguin ever, was Jacob Fowler.

This was the 21-year-old’s fourth NHL game, his second win, his first shutout, and he earned first-star honours with every save he made.

“I think I just view it as being in the zone,” Fowler said.

From the first stop he made — on a 25-foot snapper from Kevin Hayes in the sixth minute of play — to the last kick of his pad on a Thomas Novak wraparound chance in the final minute of the third period, he appeared impenetrable.

In front of Fowler, the 62nd overall pick in the 2022 Draft, Lane Hutson, became the fastest Canadiens defenceman and the 11th fastest defenceman in NHL history to reach 100 points, when he started the play No. 62, Owen Beck, finished for his first NHL goal.

This was Hutson’s 119th game in the league, and Beck’s 21st. Just like Fowler, the two of them are just 21 years old. And all three of them are helping the Canadiens vault their way towards the place youth and premium talent propelled the Penguins to for so long.

It is the place the Penguins fell out of three years ago. And now, older, stripped bare of so much of the skill that saw them contend for—and win—multiple Stanley Cups, they’re plummeting as far away from it as they can get.

After a shockingly good, 8-2-2 October, they’ve spent the last two months losing. It started in November and got worse after Evgeni Malkin was hurt in a 4-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Dec. 4.

The Penguins haven’t won a game since, with Saturday’s 4-0 loss making it eight in a row, and it seems inevitable many more losses are coming for them—whether they happen in succession or not.

This was Montreal’s second win over the Penguins in the last 10 days, and the lopsided nature of it emphasized to what end these two teams are headed in different directions.

Roughly 23 hours before it was celebrated in the Canadiens’ room, something else drove home the stark contrast between them: Phillip Danault was acquired from the Los Angeles Kings by general manager Kent Hughes.

Until the next one, which could come soon, with the Canadiens now 19-12-4 on their season, owning the best points percentage in the Atlantic Division (.603), and possessing so many upstart players making an impact.

“He’s a kid that you feel that he’s got a lot of confidence,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis. “I think he believes in himself, and it’s not arrogance. There’s a big difference. It’s a confident kid. He plays very mature. And all these games he’s getting right now, you can’t buy that experience. Playing on a Saturday night at home, you can’t buy that, you’ve got to live through it, and he did that tonight. He did a heck of a job, and he seems like he’s been ready for this for a long time.”

It was a slower burn for Beck, who was taken 29 spots before Hutson in 2022.

But on a night where veteran Jake Evans went down less than four minutes into the game and Beck was forced into more ice-time than he would’ve otherwise received, the kid played his best.

On top of shelving his first goal, Beck won four of his eight faceoffs, notched two shots on net, had three hits and rode the momentum he had built over his last three games with the team.

“I feel he’s understanding the NHL game more, the risk that you need to manage, the tough areas,” said St. Louis. “There’s a progress in everything for him. Every time you come up, there should be some progress. That’s what I see, and he’s giving us good minutes.”

Hutson played over 23 mostly great ones in this game and continued his meteoric rise towards NHL superstardom, over which he’s continuously made league history.

Crosby has made so much of it over his 1386 games. To see the Kid come to Montreal Saturday with a chance to tie Le Magnifique was still unbelievable, even if you had a sense for how great he’d be well before he played his first game against the Canadiens in November of 2005.

St. Louis grew up in Laval, where he watched Lemieux torch the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League before joining the Penguins and setting the NHL ablaze. He said on Saturday morning that he considers him to be the greatest player ever, with all his points recorded in just 915 games a testament to the fact.

“I think Sid is top five for sure,” the coach said. “Top five all-time. I don’t know exactly where, but I feel I pay my respect if I put Sid in my top five.”

Crosby, in all his humility, isn’t prepared to consider his place in NHL history.

All he wanted on Saturday was a win.

“I don’t think about it a lot,” Crosby said of the record he was on the precipice of breaking. “It’s something that obviously I’m asked about as I’m getting close. You’re just hoping that you can win the game and get it done. There’ll be lots of time to reflect on it one day, but at this point it’s not really the motive.”

The motive has always been the same for Crosby, though it’s becoming more and more elusive for him with these Penguins.

Maybe Crosby’s night will come Sunday, when the Penguins welcome the Canadiens to PPG Paints Arena for the final instalment of this season series.

But Saturday belonged to the kids in bleu, blanc, et rouge, to Fowler, Hutson and Beck.