Montreal Canadiens: The ‘response’ to the Paul Byron hit

The lack of response to the Paul Byron hit may point to another flaw within the Montreal Canadiens roster in that the will to fight back is gone.

It was another loss for the Montreal Canadiens last night. They started very strong not allowing St. Louis to get a shot on goal until 17 minutes into the first period. Montreal also managed to get a couple of looks on Carter Hutton in the opening frame of the game, but no pucks past the goal line for them.

Unfortunately, luck like that comes back to haunt you. The Blues found the back of the net first thanks to Ivan Barbashev and Karl Alzner. No, I didn’t type wrong, it was an attempt to take away a shooting lane that turned into a very useful screen on Carey Price. Patrik Berglund and Alexander Steen added tallies of their own on the power play and penalty kill respectively to get a comfortable 3-0 lead over the Habs.

But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The focus is what happened at the end of the game. Paul Byron was forced to go to the dressing room after taking a dangerous hit from behind by Colton Parayko. The hit sent Byron into the boards right arm first, and Parayko was given a match penalty.

Whether NHL Player Safety wants to take a look at that or not is their prerogative, but if the goal is to protect the players, that hit definitely wasn’t following the guideline. What makes it worse, in my opinion, is that none of his teammates did anything about it, and that’s been one of the team’s core issues this season.

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Where’s the character? How many times has Price been run into this season? I’d wager quite a bit. However, I only remember a scrum happening afterwards once, and it was thanks to Nicolas Deslauriers. The fact that nobody so much as went for Parayko is disheartening and shows the lack of fight in the team.

It’s the final minutes of the game, so what? Send a message! I hate to feed into the some of the bogus narratives floating around the team, but this doesn’t help the ‘team has given up’ angle at all. Granted, they could prioritize Byron’s safety over getting angry, but still.

If seeing Byron, who has been one of the Habs’ best players all season, get taken out in such a dangerous way doesn’t trigger a response, then what will?

Next: An Avenue for Morrow

What do you think? Were the players on the ice wrong for not doing anything? Let us know in the comments below.