Dobson and Reinbacher were on the ice for most of the pain Toronto\u2019s star-less lineup inflicted before suffering some of their own and leaving the game. Dobson checked out at the end of the second period \u2014 after a shift that counted for 1:46 of the 15:16 he played \u2014 and Reinbacher followed him to the clinic with 8:02 remaining in the third period. Guhle didn\u2019t even make it to the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He took the morning skate and then skipped warmup and was scratched from the lineup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a different threshold of what\u2019s worth playing through in pre-season,\u201d said Mike Matheson.<\/p>\n
It was just his way of saying the injuries weren\u2019t too concerning, and the irony of his statement was surely unintended after the Canadiens essentially mailed in the last half of the game.<\/p>\n
It was shortly after they went down 5-2 that one scout remarked to us, \u201cThese guys look like a team full of players looking to not get hit and just get out of here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
It obviously didn\u2019t appear too different to St. Louis, who later voiced his displeasure with what he saw from his front-row seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. Louis was asked if anyone offered him something to be pleased with, and he pointed to Matheson\u2019s effort and Filip Mesar\u2019s play, which was as much a compliment to those guys as it was an indictment of the rest of his players.<\/p>\n
The coach had been stressing urgency since the start of camp \u2014 and getting it up until this point. Now he\u2019s hoping this point is just an isolated moment that serves as a reminder of what happens when urgency is traded for complacency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"32](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758399728_758_32-THOUGHTS_1280X720_V2-640x360.jpg\")
32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n
Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cToday was average,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cHave to be sure it\u2019s one time and that we don\u2019t continue to repeat that.\u201d<\/p>\n If the Canadiens continue to repeat it, it certainly wouldn\u2019t create the optimal conditions for players who need the reps these games will provide them before the real ones get underway.<\/p>\n No one needs them more than Kirby Dach<\/a>, who was playing his first game since tearing his ACL in Ottawa on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n If he felt good before Thursday\u2019s game started \u2014 and he did, telling reporters who attended the morning skate that he was in \u201ca good headspace\u201d \u2014 he probably didn\u2019t feel amazing about finishing minus-3 through the 18:20 he played in this stinker.<\/p>\n Earlier in the day, Dach said his objective was to regain some of the timing that could only be conditioned in a real game, that he was hoping to keep building up chemistry with linemates Patrik Laine<\/a> and Ivan Demidov<\/a>, and that his focus would be on playing sound defence and letting the game come to him.<\/p>\n But the game came at Dach and there wasn\u2019t much he could do to stop it with the way Laine and Demidov played beside him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like guys were, myself included, just sleeping a little bit,\u201d said Laine.<\/p>\n Hey, the big Finn scored a goal on the power play, and Demidov made a beautiful play to set it up.<\/p>\n But both the 19-year-old Russian and Laine were in full rem cycle for the rest of this one. The former was out of position on two goals against and the latter was so careless with the puck he put the Canadiens on defence far more often than they needed to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n It made a difficult task for Dach near impossible in his return.\u00a0<\/p>\n It also heightened the urgency of this line\u2019s reality because the Canadiens only have three pre-season games remaining and, as St. Louis said, the defensive part of their game needs \u201cto be dialed in now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo be a hard line to play against defensively, all three guys have to be committed to it,\u201d said St. Louis. \u201cYou could have one guy committed to it, two not, or two guys committed and one not. It\u2019s just all three guys have to be committed.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s time for Demidov to find it, and it\u2019s normal it\u2019s not there for him with consistency at this juncture \u2014 just nine games (pre-season, regular season and post-season combined) into his NHL career.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not normal for Laine to be looking for it 10 years into his career, so he\u2019ll have to immediately adjust.<\/p>\n As for Dach, St. Louis said he liked his \u201cenergy and legs,\u201d and said he wouldn\u2019t judge the player after his first game in eight months.<\/p>\n Still, the expectation is that Dach redeems his best game much sooner than he did in coming back from ACL\/MCL surgery a year ago, because, as St. Louis said during his morning press conference, \u201cI feel Dacher\u2019s in a better place,\u201d and \u201cI think he did things differently this summer,\u201d and \u201cI think he\u2019s further along, so he\u2019ll be more ready to get going right away.\u201d<\/p>\n He also said the group being further along in its collective play would only help Dach.<\/p>\n Then the Canadiens, who also dressed their top line for the game, played collectively awful.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the big concern.<\/p>\n Losing Dobson (who was traded for and immediately paid the highest salary on the team to be its No. 1 defenceman) along with Reinbacher after Guhle was pulled from the lineup would\u2019ve been much more troubling had St. Louis not said: \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s serious stuff, so I\u2019m not too worried about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Friday will be about fixing things and preparing for a rematch against a much stronger Maple Leafs side in Toronto on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 \u201cIf I look at our camp, it\u2019s the first day I can say I\u2019m disappointed,\u201d said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-170014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}