{"id":951641,"date":"2026-10-30T07:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951641\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T07:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:50:11","slug":"canadiens-complete-perfect-road-trip-without-suzuki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951641\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens complete perfect road trip without Suzuki"},"content":{"rendered":"

They beat the Dallas Stars 5-2 Thursday to cap a perfect road trip against all odds, and did it exactly as suggested they\u2019d have to in the absence of their captain \u2014 and other key players and components.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust fall back on the collective game,\u201d said coach Martin St. Louis before the Canadiens left for Chicago sans Suzuki one week ago. \u201cWe\u2019re just going to keep going. It\u2019s a big piece, but we\u2019ll be ready\u2026 And we\u2019re always going to fall back on our collective game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, it was nowhere to be found in St. Louis on Tuesday, when Jacob Fowler<\/a> came up with a miraculous 46-save shutout to steal away two points from the Blues.<\/p>\n

But the collective game was there throughout the rest of this 4-0-0 road trip, with several different players stepping up to fill the massive void left by Suzuki.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens already had one big hole to patch, deprived of Demidov\u2019s services since Game 3 of their season. But they at least got Matheson back for that first game against the Blackhawks after he missed four with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n

That one at United Center belonged to Jake Evans, who scored two goals in a 4-1 win that kicked this trip off in style.<\/p>\n

Fowler was then excellent in Sunday\u2019s Heritage Classic against the Winnipeg Jets, but he wasn\u2019t alone. Defencemen Kaiden Guhle and Lane Hutson came up with the goals that gave the Canadiens a lead they\u2019d never relinquish.<\/p>\n

They blew two-goal leads in three of four games before hitting the road but notched them in each of these four games and held on to win all four in regulation, with this one in Dallas \u2014 sans Matheson \u2014 a sign of how far they\u2019ve come to buck that trend.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to continue to play the right way, but also, you\u2019ve got to continue to play, and I felt we did a good job of that tonight,\u201d said Noah Dobson to reporters at American Airlines Center, and he was bang on.<\/p>\n

Against a Stars team desperate to avoid losing a second consecutive game, the Canadiens played the right way and pressured all over the ice in the third period, clamping down at five-on-five, denying Dallas a chance to get to Jakub Dobes<\/a> with more than two shots on net.<\/p>\n

He stopped them easily and made an incredible penalty-kill save on Wyatt Johnston on a carbon-copy play that Johnston scored on during a first-period Stars power play. Dobes also made two other penalty-kill saves on Jason Robertson a period earlier.<\/p>\n

But he wasn\u2019t forced to make any tough ones at five-on-five, thanks to a mature and responsible performance from the entire group in front of him.<\/p>\n

It was a confidence builder for the Canadiens. This whole trip was.<\/p>\n

We suggested it would be determinant for their season<\/a>, and we didn\u2019t feel that to be hyperbolic considering the challenge of not only playing without their most complete player but also having to do so under the pressure of starting the season 4-3-2, in sixth place in the Atlantic Division and 20th place in the NHL.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came together a lot during this road trip to find results and protect leads and find ways to win,\u201d said Alex Newhook, who had two goals against the Stars.<\/p>\n

Cole Caufield also picked up two, and Phillip Danault\u2019s empty-netter felt like a just reward for how incredibly he played in these four games without Suzuki.<\/p>\n

Without Suzuki and Demidov, the power play was a dysfunctional mess, going 0-for-10 on this trip and plummeting to 30th in the league in the category.<\/p>\n

But the penalty kill went 12-for-12 through games in Chicago, Winnipeg and St. Louis before losing Matheson \u2014 the player who averages the most time on ice on the penalty kill in the NHL \u2014 and allowing only one goal on four Stars opportunities. When Newhook says the Canadiens came together, the evidence was right there \u2014also at five-on-five, and in how the team played to secure leads.<\/p>\n

Now the Canadiens are coming home 8-3-2, with the second-best points percentage (.692) in the Atlantic and fourth-best one in the league.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll be greeted by Suzuki, who\u2019s skating hard and hoping to return from his hand injury as early as this time next week.<\/p>\n

It could take him up to two more weeks before he actually gets back, though.<\/p>\n

\"3232 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

It won\u2019t take Demidov as long. He should be trading in his walking boot for a skate any day now, as he nears the end of what was supposed to be a maximum of four weeks on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

That should revive the power play, but at least nothing else needs a rescue breath for now.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019d have thought that\u2019d be the case one week ago?<\/p>\n

Apparently at least one person.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d have said it was possible,\u201d St. Louis explained. \u201cI think everything is possible when you believe in yourself and what you do. I know we were missing big pieces, but our collective game carries us.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, it\u2019s done exactly that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They beat the Dallas Stars 5-2 Thursday to cap a perfect road trip against all odds, and did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-951641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951641","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=951641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}