Canadiens, blasted by Blues, must fix bad habits to keep NHL playoff hopes alive (2025)

ST. LOUIS — Tuesday’s game between the Montreal Canadiens and St. Louis Blues was billed as a matchup of two teams that are a mirror image of each other.

They are two of the hottest teams in the NHL coming out of the 4 Nations Face-Off break. Two teams making an unlikely push for the playoffs and holding down the final wild-card spot in their conferences. Two teams led by star centres, Nick Suzuki and Robert Thomas, who were left off Team Canada and came out of that break demonstrating how much they deserved to make it. Two teams that have had success despite missing important defencemen in Kaiden Guhle and Colton Parayko.

The similarities were seemingly endless.

But underneath the hood, the Canadiens and Blues were not all that similar. The Blues were looking to extend a six-game winning streak where they had outscored their opposition 28-9. The Canadiens had not lost in regulation over their previous six games with a 3-0-3 record, but the cumulative score — not counting the shootout “goal” for the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday — was 24-19. Not bad, but not exactly at the same level as the Blues, though St. Louis had some easier opponents on its schedule.

The Blues’ winning streak is now seven games after they dismantled the Canadiens 6-1 on Tuesday, bringing their cumulative score to 34-10 over that streak. And the Canadiens are left to wonder if this is a turning point in their playoff push.

The Canadiens were in a playoff spot on Jan. 21 after winning seven of nine games.

They were out of a playoff spot on Jan. 22, then went 1-7-1 from that point to the 4 Nations break.

Coming out of the break, coach Martin St. Louis mentioned that experiencing that slide better prepared him to recognize a similar slide, and ideally, would have better prepared him to cut it off at the pass.

This loss to the Blues, combined with the shootout loss to the Avalanche on Saturday, feels like the right time for St. Louis and the Canadiens to stop the bleeding before it becomes a hemorrhage.

Again, this was the Canadiens’ first regulation loss in two weeks. It’s not a crisis. And they were helped on Tuesday night when the New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators all lost in regulation, so the Canadiens lost no ground in the playoff race. But in the way they played, they did lose ground.

And St. Louis appeared to know it after the game.

“We didn’t make it easy on ourselves tonight,” St. Louis said. “I didn’t like how many pucks (Blues goalie Jordan) Binnington got to touch. Our forecheck was not as good as in the past. It’s something that we fuel off and we didn’t have much of that. We’ll look.

“Some of it, I’ll take responsibility in how we want to come up together because we don’t always come up the same way; we kind of game plan based on who we’re playing against.”

Before the game, St. Louis talked about that very thing: puck placement on the forecheck, keeping it away from the goaltender. He noted that the way the Canadiens place pucks is at least somewhat dependent on the team they are facing and its structure. It is, in other words, a coaching decision.

“It changes from team to team and where the guys are on the ice,” St. Louis said Tuesday morning. “You have to be calculated with where you’re putting the pucks, and sometimes it’s based on where your guys are and sometimes it’s based on knowing the other team’s tendencies, and sometimes it’s both.”

Puck management and risk-reward assessment are two defining principles in the Canadiens’ turnaround. Playing low-risk hockey becomes increasingly important this time of year, especially in the current NHL landscape. Teams become more risk-averse and feed off poor risk management.

It is a drum St. Louis has been beating all season, and coming out of the break, the Canadiens were good at assessing risk and acting accordingly.

“I think you see less and less turnovers, stubborn plays when there’s nothing there,” St. Louis said Tuesday morning. “The teams are managing their risk way more, so there’s more deep pucks when there’s no numerical advantage. You’re still going to have the turnovers from lack of execution sometimes, a bad bounce or something like that, and off of that you might be able to possess across the line. But I feel the teams at this time of the season are very well structured, they play with low risk, that you have to count on your forecheck to go win pucks back and get the O-zone going.”

But against the Blues, that discipline seemed to disappear. Turnovers coming out of the Canadiens’ own zone, just inside their blue line, seemed to particularly irk their coach. In the first period, Patrik Laine had one, and Alex Newhook had another on consecutive shifts. It took the Canadiens over 13 minutes to generate a real shot on goal on Binnington, and the lack of risk management was a big reason.

“The first 10 minutes, we committed so many turnovers,” St. Louis said. “It’s hard to prevent the other team from entering our zone with possession because of that. Turnovers just inside our blue line, trying to exit, being cute, neutral zone turnovers, they’re all actions that help the other team. And we did a lot of them early.”

One of them was allowing the Blues to enter the second period with a 2-1 lead after allowing a goal with six seconds left in the first.

Holloway hits, Holloway scores. #stlblues pic.twitter.com/CTFTIub55p

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) March 26, 2025

St. Louis often talks about being able to live with one-offs, but he says trends are more troublesome. For all of St. Louis’ time as head coach, a trend could be defined as several games. Where the Canadiens are now, with each game being so important, a trend would qualify as two games.

Thus, the Canadiens’ inability to properly manage the puck is now a trend.

“Yeah, a little bit,” St. Louis said. “Especially the Colorado game and this game, we’ll talk about it. I didn’t necessarily feel that against the Islanders or Ottawa, but I definitely felt that against Colorado. The top two lines, both those teams, they’re dangerous. You do that when those guys are on the ice, you have to defend a lot, and these are guys that can finish on their chances.”

Suzuki seemed exasperated after the game. The Canadiens recognized what kind of challenge the Blues presented, and they weren’t up for it. They had their B-game, didn’t recognize it soon enough and didn’t simplify things to compensate for the fact their execution wasn’t where it needed to be for a second game in a row.

“Yeah, I think we needed that for sure,” Suzuki said. “It’s tough, a long flight. We didn’t skate this morning, trying to save legs. To just come out flat, I think we need to simplify early, and we just didn’t do that. It was talked about, but we just kept turning pucks over and we weren’t as sharp.”

The Canadiens will practice here Wednesday before flying to Philadelphia to face the Flyers on Thursday. It will be a significant practice. It will be a significant game. The Canadiens have put themselves in a situation where they simply can’t afford a losing streak. The Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers follow on this road trip. Their playoff chances could be hanging in the balance, and corrections need to be immediate.

“To me, at this time of the year, I feel like — I heard this saying the other day — it’s not failure tonight,” St. Louis said. “To me, it’s fertilizer. That’s what it needs to be.”

The Canadiens’ goal this season was to play meaningful games in March. They have achieved it. But the reason that was the goal was for management to gain information on this team and for the players and coaches to benefit from these learning moments, to live the urgency of a playoff race and the need to correct yourself quickly and prevent a season-altering slide down the standings.

The Canadiens’ next game could be the difference between a season-altering slide and a sign that this team can right itself quickly. It is on the players and the coach to provide positive information to management under these circumstances because that is what this season is all about.

(Photo: Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)

Arpon Basu has been the editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montréal since 2017. Previously, he worked for the NHL for six years as managing editor of LNH.com and a contributing writer on NHL.com. Follow Arpon on Twitter @ArponBasu