They were a bit behind through most the night, but the 19-year-old was way ahead.
“Obviously, (Demidov has) got great feet, he’s got great deception, quick hands,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, “but he’s got a quick mind, too, so he can execute fast what he sees, and we saw that multiple times tonight.”
Yes, we did, and it marked one more special quality this special player possesses: the ability to adjust quicker than most players in his position would.
Wednesday’s 2-1 win over the Calgary Flames was just Demidov’s 15th game at this level — including the two regular-season contests he appeared in before playing five Stanley Cup Playoff games against the Washington Capitals — and that’s about all the experience he has of playing competitively on an NHL-sized ice surface. You could see through the first seven games of the season that his skills were enabling him to regularly beat opposing players in one-on-one situations, but you could also see he was being left with much less time to execute the next play than he was accustomed to.
We asked St. Louis on Wednesday morning how long it might take Demidov to adjust to that.
“It’s just feeling that, feeling those reps, and I think he will,” St. Louis responded. “Great players always do. I’m not worried about it.”
Turns out the coach has great anticipation, as well, because Demidov was able to string together his plays much more frequently in Calgary on Wednesday than he had in any other game through the start of this season.
Not that he hasn’t been making great ones all along. He wouldn’t have a goal and six points through eight games if he wasn’t.
But to see Demidov accept the puck in overtime and know exactly what he was going to do with it as soon as Matheson jumped over the boards highlighted to what extent his NHL game is rapidly evolving.
“When I turned, I saw him,” said Demidov. “I knew he would be screened on the other side, hidden, and I saw that they would not notice him.”
Demidov identifies what he’s going to do right after he gets the puck. He’s facing Montreal’s bench, where he can see Matheson jumping on and beginning a route to the opposite side. He takes his man, Flames forward Matt Coronato, with him to the corner, then shifts his angle and his head towards Canadiens teammate Alex Newhook, who’s in the high slot. And once he’s baited Rasmus Andersson to move towards Newhook, he slides the puck across Dustin Wolf’s crease to Matheson.
It was an elite play from an elite player who’s finding his composure in the world’s best (and fastest) league.
The one Demidov made towards the end of the third period — when he flashed to the dot to open up a great one-timer opportunity and, instead of shooting it, threw it across an open seam for what would’ve been a sure goal for Nick Suzuki had Flames defenceman MacKenzie Weegar not gotten a piece of it — was another sign of just how comfortable he’s becoming.
“He’s doing it way faster than I did it,” said Juraj Slafkovsky, who was chosen first-overall in 2022 and really took massive strides in that process through the back half of last season, which he’s built on at the start of this one.
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Unlike Slafkovsky or Demidov, Suzuki grew up on an NHL-sized ice surface.
But it still took the Canadiens’ captain time to adjust to NHL speed.
“It’s tough,” Suzuki said. “Guys get paid a lot of money to defend, and you’ve got to find ways to create. You’re not going to get something every shift, so you have to be patient.
“But Demi’s starting to make elite plays all the time, and he’s learning his way through the NHL.”
It’s happening quick, and it doesn’t detract from Demidov’s early-career accomplishment that it was most apparent against the Flames, who lost their seventh game in a row on Wednesday.
They were the better team at Saddledome for most the game. Maybe not when the lights were out above the ice through the start, but they seized control before Demidov and Suzuki made some great plays in the final 10 minutes of regulation and the former made the decisive one to turn the red light on behind Wolf in overtime.
Jakub Dobes was great for Montreal, making 36 saves to match several spectacular ones Wolf made. Zachary Bolduc scored on a Canadiens power play, Suzuki could’ve had a hat trick with the chances he got, and the team’s penalty kill came up big on five man-advantages awarded to the Flames.
But it was Demidov’s performance that really stood out.
At the rate at which he’s adjusting, that’s going to happen more and more as this season rolls along.