There was no way they were giving them back.<\/p>\n
Tanner Jeannot generously offered the Canadiens a five-on-three advantage 1:10 after Sturm\u2019s benevolent blunder, and that\u2019s when Cole Caufield<\/a> scored his first goal in six games to make it 4-2.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hampus Lindholm then followed Jeannot to the box before Nick Suzuki<\/a> took advantage of a second consecutive five-on-three advantage to make it 5-2 Canadiens.<\/p>\n And by the time Juraj Slafkovsky made it 6-2 in the 53rd minute of play, his teammates had already exhaled \u2014 somehow without coughing.<\/p>\n The Canadiens, riddled by a virus that\u2019s been bouncing around the dressing room, had the opportunity to cruise to victory in their third game in four nights.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was the Canadiens\u2019 fifth game in eight nights and their 13th\u00a0through the first 23 days of December, and you could see them running on fumes by the end of the first period.<\/p>\n But by the end of the third, the Canadiens were able to walk their way through the checkered flag. And while that was \u201ca Christmas gift come early,\u201d as coach Martin St. Louis referred to it when speaking with reporters at TD Garden afterwards, the 7-4-2 record they cobbled together through their most treacherous portion of the schedule to date was fully earned.<\/p>\n The Canadiens sprinted through four sets of back-to-backs \u2014 three of them involving travel \u2014 to take 11 of 16 points over that stretch. Down Patrik Laine and Kaiden Guhle since the middle of October, down Alex Newhook and Kirby Dach since the middle of November, they lost Jake Evans in the fourth minute of Saturday\u2019s game and still beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, and then they lost Alex Texier in the final minute of Period 1 in Boston and dismantled the Bruins from that point forward.<\/p>\n It revealed the character of the team \u2014 and something more.<\/p>\n With nearly half the season banked, despite adversity that came with injuries, illness, a goaltending crisis and one particularly bad run of play, the Canadiens have remained on the path they wanted to be on from the start. Their goal was progress after the first playoff berth of the rebuild, and they have made some so far this season.<\/p>\n The addition of Texier, after his contract was terminated by the St. Louis Blues in the third week of November, helped. The trade for Phillip Danault, whose first game back with the team after four years with the Los Angeles Kings came in Boston, is bound to pay immediate dividends.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those gifts from the Bruins already did.<\/p>\n \u201cIt gave us a chance to separate and manage the game,\u201d said St. Louis. \u201cIt\u2019s rare you get to score four goals in the third period.\u201d<\/p>\n Once three of them got behind Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman from 7:04-10:09 of the frame, it gave the Canadiens a head start on rest they must weaponize coming out of the break.<\/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 They\u2019re 20-12-5, with 45 points, owning the fourth-best points percentage in the Eastern Conference and eighth-best in the league, and they\u2019ve got more than three days to catch their breath before attempting to build on their success.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019ll practice Dec. 27 and hopefully be refreshed and ready once play resumes with games in Tampa and Sunrise, Fla., to close out December.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s a chance Dach could be back for those. Texier, too. And there\u2019s hope for Guhle to help the Canadiens through at least part of their 16-game January.<\/p>\n The wait could be longer for Evans, whose timeline to recover hasn\u2019t yet been advanced by the Canadiens. Sources informed us the worst was avoided when he collided knee-on-knee with Justin Brazeau, but it\u2019s still expected \u2014 even if unconfirmed \u2014 he could miss up to six weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019ll likely be at least that long before Laine can return from core-muscle surgery, and Newhook isn\u2019t scheduled to be back from surgery to repair a broken ankle before the middle after the Olympic break, which runs from Feb. 5 through Feb. 25.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of hockey to be played before then, but the way the Canadiens have played to this point offers reason to believe they can handle it.<\/p>\n Jacob Fowler<\/a>, whose win in Boston gave him a 3-1-1 record and a .918 save percentage through his first five games in the league, has helped stabilize the goaltending. If his work in tandem with 24-year-old Jakub Dobes<\/a> hasn\u2019t given 29-year-old starter Samuel Montembeault<\/a> enough time to sort out his game, we\u2019ll find out soon enough.<\/p>\n Regardless, the Canadiens appear to have at least two goaltenders they can rely on for now.<\/p>\n They also have seven defencemen in health, which is a major bonus at this stage of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n The performance from the top players on the blue line has been exemplary. Lane Hutson<\/a>\u2019s three assists Tuesday gave him 35 points on the year. Noah Dobson<\/a>\u2019s three got him up to 23 without any time spent on the team\u2019s top power-play unit and nearly all his five-on-five ice time spent in the most difficult matchups. And Dobson\u2019s partner, Mike Matheson<\/a>, has been a horse, logging a team-high 25:02 on average.<\/p>\n The bottom three defencemen have held up while Adam Engstrom, who was scratched from Tuesday\u2019s game, has provided quality depth.\u00a0<\/p>\n As have several young forwards \u2014 and even a couple of the older ones, like Sammy Blais, who scored his first goal as a Canadien in Boston. His first assist was notched Sunday, in his first game since being re-claimed off waivers from Toronto.<\/p>\n That depth is valuable. It\u2019s what the team will need moving forward.<\/p>\n The Canadiens won\u2019t say no to a few more gifts, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was an early Christmas offering from Marco Sturm and his Boston Bruins, no gift receipts required. When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-365361","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\/365361","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=365361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"32](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/32-Thoughts-podcast-Elliotte-Friedman-Kyle-Bukauskas-640x360.jpg\")
32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n