{"id":233765,"date":"2025-10-23T06:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233765\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T06:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:43:09","slug":"canadiens-ivan-demidov-stands-out-in-win-rapidly-adjusting-to-nhl-pace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233765\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ Ivan Demidov stands out in win, rapidly adjusting to NHL pace"},"content":{"rendered":"

They were a bit behind through most the night, but the 19-year-old was way ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, (Demidov has) got great feet, he\u2019s got great deception, quick hands,\u201d said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, \u201cbut he\u2019s got a quick mind, too, so he can execute fast what he sees, and we saw that multiple times tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s 2-1 win over the Calgary Flames was just Demidov\u2019s 15th\u00a0game at this level \u2014 including the two regular-season contests he appeared in before playing five Stanley Cup Playoff games against the Washington Capitals \u2014 and that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

We asked St. Louis on Wednesday morning how long it might take Demidov to adjust to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just feeling that, feeling those reps, and I think he will,\u201d St. Louis responded. \u201cGreat players always do. I\u2019m not worried about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Not that he hasn\u2019t been making great ones all along. He wouldn\u2019t have a goal and six points through eight games if he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I turned, I saw him,\u201d said Demidov. \u201cI knew he would be screened on the other side, hidden, and I saw that they would not notice him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demidov identifies what he\u2019s going to do right after he gets the puck. He\u2019s facing Montreal\u2019s 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\u2019s in the high slot. And once he\u2019s baited Rasmus Andersson to move towards Newhook, he slides the puck across Dustin Wolf\u2019s crease to Matheson.<\/p>\n

It was an elite play from an elite player who\u2019s finding his composure in the world\u2019s best (and fastest) league.<\/p>\n

The one Demidov made towards the end of the third period \u2014 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\u2019ve been a sure goal for Nick Suzuki<\/a> had Flames defenceman MacKenzie Weegar not gotten a piece of it \u2014 was another sign of just how comfortable he\u2019s becoming.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing it way faster than I did it,\u201d 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\u2019s built on at the start of this one.<\/p>\n

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Unlike Slafkovsky or Demidov, Suzuki grew up on an NHL-sized ice surface.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it still took the Canadiens\u2019 captain time to adjust to NHL speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d Suzuki said. \u201cGuys get paid a lot of money to defend, and you\u2019ve got to find ways to create. You\u2019re not going to get something every shift, so you have to be patient.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Demi\u2019s starting to make elite plays all the time, and he\u2019s learning his way through the NHL.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s happening quick, and it doesn\u2019t detract from Demidov\u2019s early-career accomplishment that it was most apparent against the Flames, who lost their seventh game in a row on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve had a hat trick with the chances he got, and the team\u2019s penalty kill came up big on five man-advantages awarded to the Flames.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it was Demidov\u2019s performance that really stood out.<\/p>\n

At the rate at which he\u2019s adjusting, that\u2019s going to happen more and more as this season rolls along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They were a bit behind through most the night, but the 19-year-old was way ahead.\u00a0 \u201cObviously, (Demidov has)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-233765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233765","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=233765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}