Canadiens: Three Takes From This Wild Weekend

Cole Caufield got everyone jumping from their couches against the Flyers as he delivered a bomb of a slapshot to defeat the Flyers in overtime.

That’s his 9th of the season totalling 25 points in 44 games for the young winger.

Caufield had an abysmal game against the Kraken on Saturday. Trying to do too much and being credited with 4 giveaways. The second period against Seattle was particularly brutal for #22 as it looked like he was trying to generate a spark on his own. Not a bad thing, however as talented as Caufield is, he needs to look up more often and stop trying to shine brighter than the others.

What that means is that he needs to simply stick to the role given to him and not let his talent get to his head. Especially when you have Nick Suzuki who’s having a career year beside him and Josh Anderson who’s as inconsistent as they come. Sometimes you just need to breathe and trust your teammates.

That’s exactly what happened in the third period when the Canadiens’ defence took care of business. Alexander Romanov blasted a shot to bring the game to 3-2 and Nick Suzuki tied things up thanks to some solid plays from Romanov and Ben Chiarot.

You can bet that Martin St. Louis spoke to Caufield because 24 hours later, he was back to being calm and responsible. Caufield played his lanes properly and of course he had that overtime winner, but he also had an assist on Suzuki’s first goal of the night thanks to a nifty pass, rather than rushing the net that had tons of traffic.

A great display of a player learning from his mistakes quickly and much kudos to the coaching staff for clearly having a chat with him.

The Canadiens were 1 for 4 on the Power Play against Philadelphia and 0 for 6 against Seattle. I get it, the Canadiens have the least amount of goals for in the league with 147 and the most amount of goals against with 224.

Stats aside, while the team overall has snapped out of the hypnosis that was Dominique Ducharme’s system, there is still work to do with Alex Burrows, who is responsible for the power play.

Against Seattle we saw that same old ho-hum powerplay system. The one that never works but coaches in the NHL are still desperately trying to make work.

Rushing into the opposing zone finally comes from the back end and starts setting the play up. Which is a great relief instead of the constant dumping and chase system which often gets forwards stuck up high and leads to an odd man rush.

Once, however, the puck is in the zone and the pass is made to the first forward, then it all becomes a deer in the headlight situation. The forward would either panic and give it away or dump the puck behind the net and start a passing rotation followed by a predictable slap shot from the blue line.

Against Philadelphia however, the adjustment was made quickly.

Same rush but this time, the forwards would cross pass the puck to the empty side of the ice leaving everyone the time to get settled. That extra three seconds to get settled made all the difference in the world as we finally saw what the power play is supposed to do. A 1-3-1 system up high in the zone is in place.

This means there’s one man in front of the net, three making a line across the zone and one man at the point. However, instead of being static, all players shift to where the puck goes making the opposing defence work harder and expend more energy.

The Canadiens only scored one goal with this approach, but it’s already better than what was on display against Seattle.

Rome wasn’t built in one day and neither will the Canadiens’ special teams either.

Nick Suzuki could be an obvious choice to talk about but he’s as consistent as they come. We do need however to talk about Rem Pitlick a lot more.

Pitlick picked up an assist on Romanov’s goal on Saturday and then played heroics against Philadelphia. He had the game tying goal coming shorthanded on top of that with 43 seconds left to the game. He then had the primary assist on Caufield’s game winner in overtime.

The waiver pickup has 6 goals and 10 assists for 16 points in 23 games since putting on a Montreal Canadiens sweater. He’s now at 12 goals, 15 assists for 27 points in 43 games this season.

Pitlick has been a coach’s dream this season. He was well respected for his talents in Minnesota but Martin St. Louis has brought the Ottawa native to a new level, being used in all kinds of situations. We have seen him on the power play, killing penalties, offensive face-off situations and defensive face-offs as well. Literally used in every possible scenario.

Not to mention that he’s seen time at center, left wing and a couple of shifts on the right side as well.

Paul Byron is the obvious comparison fans will come up with. Another Ottawa native claimed by waivers and made a career of being speedy, flexible and capable of secondary scoring.

The only complaint one might have against Pitlick is that he is just too quick. There was half a shift against Seattle that Pitlick had Byron on the other side and Evans was just gasping for air trying to catch up.

Decision making will be the most important part of Pitlick’s game, but that will come with letting him play. He’s an exciting player to watch and hard not to fall in love with his work ethic. It will be very curious to see how he will fare in a full 82 game season in the NHL.

Remember, he’s only 24 years old so he might be on the cusp of showing the world what he’s made of.