Canadiens Losing Streak A Good Thing For St. Louis

We can finally count the remainder of games left with one hand. For the Montreal Canadiens, i’m sure there’s going to be a collective sigh of relief once this nightmare of a season is finally over.

At the time of this writing, the Canadiens are in the midst of an atrocious six game losing streak where they’ve been outscored 25-9 and have been shutout twice. Overall, the Canadiens are 2-7 in April with one of these wins coming in a shootout against Tampa Bay. The other win was the 7-4 drubbing of Andrew Hammond and the New Jersey Devils.

The piling of losses however come at a great time. Not only does it improve our chances at a high lottery pick, but getting dominated in every facet of the game is something Martin St. Louis has not necessarily seen on a nightly basis.

We were almost getting used to getting outscored early and start mounting a comeback. As of recent though, there is not such thing. The offence has gone silent, the defence is absurdly bad, and the goaltending has been left to fend for themselves.

Carey Price has done his share since coming back. He looks healthy, his movements are fluid and more importantly, he looks happy. Sporting a 2.02 goals against average and a .918 save percentage in those two games he played is nothing but encouraging for the 34 year old veteran.

Losing streaks however, are never fun. It weighs heavily on you and everything seems harder to do. You skate slower, the puck feels heavier, your hands feel like cement, etc. For coaches it’s an infuriating situation because it feels no matter what you say, or whatever line combination you make, nothing works.

At this current time, this is a great thing.

St. Louis needs to go through these kinds of adversaries in order to grow as a coach. The honeymoon phase is coming to an end and this is where he will have to rely on veteran coaches and players alike in order to get out of this funk. There is no magic potion to get out of a losing streak but through hard work and determination, a light will eventually shine.

Getting rid of all these pains early will also allow St. Louis to better prepare himself for next year’s training camp and adapt a specific psychology towards the game rather than just winging it and see what sticks.

Plus, it allows you to show you how some rookies react to this adversary. Rafaël Harvey-Pinard is going through this test himself. He, by the way, is slated to make his Bell Center debut against the Flyers.

A losing streak at the end of a season also indicates who has checked out. It’s easy for us to see on TV or at the rink which player doesn’t care anymore, but there’s probably a few coaches and personnel who could be hindering the team in some capacity as well.

Everyone learns from losing streaks. Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton are sitting upstairs every game and definitely learning and deciding who will stay and who will go this offseason.

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