Trevor Letowski Proud Of Team's Growing Culture

The Montreal Canadiens were dealt a blow with the Martin St. Louis news, but Trevor Letowski stepped in for his colleague swimmingly.

Unfortunately, the Habs were unable to pull out a win for Marty, but they gave it their all despite some questionable officiating. A questionable goaltender interference penalty against Juraj Slafkovsky took the wind out of the Habs' sails. It isn't the sole reason they lost, but it was a contributing factor.

With their minds looking ahead to their next game, and the situation surrounding their head coach and his health, they put the loss behind them. Letowski spoke about the pride that he and the staff have in the team. It takes a lot of resilience to keep on pushing without the voice that leads leading.

After back-to-back shutouts by Primeau, he had an off night, and seemingly so did the rest of the team. Mike Matheson and Kaiden Guhle had a rough go and the bounces just went the opposite way. Flames goaltender Dustin Wolf was brilliant, but he certainly has to thank his posts for keeping a handful of quality chances out of the net.

One positive that I wrote about before the matchup was Juraj Slafkovsky being one point shy of becoming the third-highest-scoring teenager in Canadiens history. He scored his 46th point surpassing Petr Svoboda on a nice play between himself, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield. A tally that ended Caufield's 13-game goalless drought.

Joshua Roy also had another strong game and Arber Xhekaj was steady on the blueline. David Savard scored a nice slapshot from the blueline, to finish off the Habs scoring for the night. But aside from that it was a pretty hum-ho night.

Not surprisingly the team and Marty were caught off guard by the announcement that didn't happen until he was already in Calgary with the team. Savard spilled the beans sort of, announcing that it had to do with Marty's son. It would be easy for the team to feel guilty for losing the game, but I expect with practice and some time to soak it all in, the Habs will look much different on Tuesday night in Edmonton against Connor McDavid and the Oilers.

The season is full of peaks and valleys, and no team is more familiar with that than the Canadiens. But like Letowski mentioned, this team has worked hard to build a winning culture. With St. Louis holding the reins, his absence didn't change the mentality, but certainly was a tough pill to swallow.

Some things are bigger than hockey and the Habs love for St. Louis is proof of that.