BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 It was the one comment that stood out most from Martin St. Louis, and not just for its accuracy.<\/p>\n
Because when the coach of the Montreal Canadiens<\/a> said \u2014 after his team lost Tuesday\u2019s Game 4 by a score of 3-2 to the Buffalo Sabres<\/a> \u2014 that he had every reason to be confident because of the chances the Canadiens were able to generate off 75 shot attempts, he was also unintentionally highlighting one of the biggest adjustments they must make going into Thursday\u2019s pivotal Game 5 (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+, 7 p.m. ET \/ 4 p.m. PT).<\/p>\n \u201cIf people watch the Canadiens,\u201d St. Louis said, \u201cit\u2019s pretty rare we reach that number.\u201d<\/p>\n Volume shooting isn\u2019t this team\u2019s bag.<\/p>\n The Canadiens were 24th\u00a0in the NHL in shot attempts this season, and that wasn\u2019t a coincidence. It was mostly by design.<\/p>\n Sure, St. Louis said on multiple occasions the Canadiens would\u2019ve liked to have generated more volume at times. But he also structured their offensive scheme to focus much more on possession and attacking for quality rather than shooting from everywhere like, say, the Carolina Hurricanes do.<\/p>\n Ripping 75 attempts in Game 4 was still largely a positive because it was indicative of how much the Canadiens had the puck. According to SportLogiq, they were in possession of it in for 10:42 of the 28:15 it was in the offensive zone, which was certainly something to pull confidence from heading back to KeyBank Center.<\/p>\n St. Louis was also right about the chances. The Canadiens had more than enough of them \u2014 including 25 to Buffalo\u2019s 14 from the high-danger zone \u2014 and even if that was largely influenced by having three more power plays than the Sabres in the game, they had reason to believe that had they cashed on just two more chances they\u2019d have earned a 3-1 lead in the series.<\/p>\n The thing is, just 30 of the Canadiens\u2019 shots hit the net, while 30 were blocked and 15 missed, leaving them with more than one conclusion to draw from the game.<\/p>\n Speaking with reporters at Montreal Metropolitan Airport before the Canadiens left for Buffalo on Wednesday afternoon, Noah Dobson hit on three, and the third one was most relevant to Montreal\u2019s game plan for Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cCredit their goalie. He made some big saves all night,\u201d the Canadiens defenceman first said.<\/p>\n \u201cI just feel like we had a lot of our shots blocked, and you\u2019ve gotta give them credit,\u201d Dobson continued. \u201cThey did a good job getting in the lanes, taking away the shot lanes, sacrificing and collapsing in front of their net.\u201d<\/p>\n And then he concluded, \u201cWe have to find ways to attack faster or change our angle of shot,\u201d which was another way of saying the Canadiens need to be a bit more deceptive and selective.<\/p>\n That was how they scored the seventh-most goals in the NHL this season. It\u2019s how they scored nine goals on Alex Lyon through Games 2 and 3 of this series before only beating Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen twice on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The 27-year-old Finn was full value in Game 4. Especially in taking two goals away from Cole Caufield on the power play after the Canadiens sniper had already gotten one against him.<\/p>\n And the Sabres deserve the credit Dobson gave them for a much more desperate defensive effort in front of Luukkonen. The lacklustre ones they offered in front of Lyon was the other factor in the middle two games of this series ending in blowouts.<\/p>\n But now, with the series tied 2-2, with the magnitude of Game 5 ratcheting up, you\u2019d expect it to be a lot tighter out there, a lot more risk-averse, and that\u2019s what the Canadiens are preparing for.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re comfortable in any type of game,\u201d said St. Louis on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Tampa Bay Lightning forced the Canadiens to play suffocating ones through a first-round series that went the distance. The Canadiens got used to having three or four players jam up the slot the way Buffalo did Tuesday, and they still found ways to still break through and win.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t buy that experience,\u201d said St. Louis.<\/p>\n His Canadiens gained a lot of it focusing on quality over quantity throughout the regular season, and that came in handy through the first two weeks of the playoffs. They learned how to attack in various ways, and they\u2019ll bring that to Game 5.<\/p>\n \u201cKeep playing together and be maybe a little more calculated on the shot selection,\u201d St. Louis said.<\/p>\n He has every reason to be confident that\u2019ll pay off because one thing that was no different in Game 4 than the other three games in this series was where the puck found itself for most the game.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you give us that time in the offensive zone,\u201d St. Louis said, \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure we\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with a bit less time in the Sabres zone, the Canadiens\u2019 ritual focus on quality over quantity throughout the last seven months should serve them well.<\/p>\n No surprise Sabres coach Lindy Ruff was flummoxed not only by some of the calls made against his team in Game 4 but also by how he felt the Canadiens baited the officials into making them.<\/p>\n \u201cI know Montreal’s got a good power play, but I think they’re going down easy.\u201d Ruff told reporters at Buffalo\u2019s media availability in Montreal on Wednesday. \u201cYou know if they have a chance to make the play look worse than it is, they\u2019re going to. It’s playoff hockey, every team in this league does it.\u201d<\/p>\n When those comments were presented to St. Louis, he fired back, \u201cWas he talking about his team, too?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s through his lens,\u201d St. Louis said. \u201cI won\u2019t comment on how he sees things \u2026 I find the calls, one way or the other, are evening out.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, the calls are 24-15 Montreal. But even if you took away two because Kaiden Guhle put too much mustard on the effect of Rasmus Dahlin\u2019s trip and Tage Thompson\u2019s cross-check in Game 4, that edge has as much to do with Montreal\u2019s control over the play in this series as it does the Sabres\u2019 indiscipline.<\/p>\n Dahlin, who is Buffalo\u2019s captain, has taken four other needless penalties so far. The Sabres have committed eight undeniable stick infractions outside of Thompson\u2019s on Guhle through the first four games. Not to mention Beck Malenstyn definitely didn\u2019t need to run Jakub Dobes over for a penalty that basically put Sunday\u2019s Game 3 out of reach.<\/p>\n Ruff said his team didn\u2019t pass the discipline test in Game 4, but giving the officials a reason to call a penalty by putting their sticks on Canadiens players isn\u2019t the only way they\u2019ve failed it in this series. Surely he knows that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 It was the one comment that stood out most from Martin St. Louis, and not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-669075","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\/669075","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=669075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}