{"id":522266,"date":"2026-03-08T09:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T09:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/522266\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T09:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T09:48:11","slug":"canadiens-leave-california-with-crucial-points-lots-to-work-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/522266\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens leave California with crucial points, lots to work on"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Martin St. Louis spoke through pursed lips, with pained facial expressions muting any excitement he might have had for this rabbit-out-of-the-hat, 4-3 win over the Los Angeles Kings that vaulted his Montreal Canadiens<\/a> back into a top-three position in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n

They came to the city of stars haggard, after having left three of four points on the table in San Jose and Anaheim with play described as \u201ctoo loose\u201d and \u201cdisappointing\u201d by their leaders, and they left with a crucial result banked but not earned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t so much loose as they were undone in a first period that saw them take three penalties and get outshot 16-1. And had they been playing anyone but the NHL\u2019s second-lowest scoring team, they\u2019d have surely not been blaring the music in the visitors\u2019 room at\u00a0Crypto.com\u00a0Arena afterwards.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s OK. Celebrate a win, don\u2019t mourn it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at this time of the season, we\u2019re in a results business,\u201d said St. Louis, \u201cso after the game, you\u2019ve got to take advantage of the emotional wave you get from a big one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunday will bring sobriety \u2014 and some of that truth that was spinning through St. Louis’ mind as words about good efforts and intentions being rewarded came out of his mouth.<\/p>\n

Hey, at least the coach didn\u2019t mince words about that five-on-six situation, which the Canadiens survived by the grace of God \u2014 and some inaccuracy from the Kings.<\/p>\n

Before that, Juraj Slafkovsky scored two goals and took advantage of Cole Caufield\u2019s excellent second effort to set up the game-winner for Nick Suzuki<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Point 50 was a commanding play that made Slafkovsky the first Montreal Canadien in history to record three consecutive 50-point seasons before his 22nd\u00a0birthday. Point 51 tied his career high, which was set over 79 games last season. And without Point 52, that six-hour flight home for the Canadiens would\u2019ve felt like one long kick in the\u2026<\/p>\n

It should still feel like a swift one to the shin, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know we can score. It doesn\u2019t take us long to score a lot of goals,\u201d said Suzuki. \u201cBut we\u2019re just a bit casual defensively against some high-powered offences. Can\u2019t be doing that for the rest of the season. We\u2019ve got to really bear down, especially with the games coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens will lose them if they don\u2019t stop feeding their opposition transition chances, free rides to the front of their net and rebounds to the middle of the slot.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a competitor,\u201d said St. Louis. \u201cHe battled right to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobes certainly battled with himself on the last two of three goals he allowed, but also valiantly against the Kings to make 36 saves.<\/p>\n

It gave Slafkovsky the chance to be the hero, which is a role he\u2019s grown accustomed to playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be the guy that takes the game over, and we have a bunch of guys here that can do it,\u201d the pride of Slovakia said. \u201cObviously I want to be one of them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talk about growth for the kid who showed up in Montreal at six-foot-three, 238 pounds and took a year-and-a-half to start showing glimpses he could play that big.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s just an evolution that we\u2019re seeing,\u201d said St. Louis of the player drafted first overall in 2022. \u201cAll along, three years ago, two years ago, you\u2019re trying to get him to improve all the time and think big picture, and (he\u2019s) going through some setbacks at that time. But it\u2019s constantly trying to evolve and improve, and he\u2019s done that this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s still very young. Who knows how high his ceiling is? But it\u2019s still very, very encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a way of looking at the Canadiens, too, who are still the youngest team in the NHL, who are still subject to setbacks, who must strive to evolve and improve in several departments to become the team they want to be.<\/p>\n

Corrections will come when practice resumes Monday, and the Canadiens will need to make several more to wash away the pervasive bad habits that could\u2019ve made this trip through California far more disastrous than it proved to be.<\/p>\n

They lost 7-5 in San Jose to the Sharks Tuesday. They lost 6-5 in a shootout to the Ducks after blowing a 5-4 lead with 42 seconds to go in regulation. And they didn\u2019t deserve to beat the Kings in this building for the first time since March of 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight, for me, Los Angeles was the better team on the ice,\u201d said St. Louis.<\/p>\n

So was Anaheim the night before. So was San Jose at the start of the week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the Canadiens don\u2019t find a way to buck the trend of being the worse team on the ice against a hopelessly lost Toronto Maple Leafs team in Montreal on Tuesday, they won\u2019t be as fortunate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Martin St. Louis spoke through pursed lips, with pained facial expressions muting any excitement he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-522266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522266","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=522266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}