A late goal should have provided Montreal with the momentum, but this is OT — and that has been the Bermuda Triangle this season.
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• Montreal Gazette
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What must be Dominique Ducharme’s next move to end the overtime curse that continues to plague his Canadiens?
Must the interim head coach resort to black magic? Must he put a Voodoo doll in the middle of the dressing room, each Montreal player sticking pins into its body? Sacrifice an animal? Not sleep for a week? Eat the heart of a strong and dangerous creature?
“Obviously at one point it is mental,” Ducharme admitted following Montreal’s 3-2 overtime defeat to the Vancouver Canucks Friday night at the Bell Centre. “What we need is to bury one and get that over with. We do that tonight and everybody’s talking about what a character team we are, coming back and tying the game.
“Our guys, for sure they think about it when the time comes,” he added.
For the second consecutive game, the Canadiens tied the score with a late third-period goal — only to lose in overtime.
On this night it was Nick Suzuki, who threaded the needle from the right-wing circle at 19:03 on the power-play, after Vancouver’s Tyler Motte was assessed a delay of game penalty for flipping the puck over the glass. It was Suzuki’s first goal in 10 games.
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With goaltender Jake Allen removed for an extra attacker, that provided the Canadiens with six skaters against four Canucks defenders.
The late goal should have provided Montreal with all the momentum, but this is overtime — and that has been the Bermuda Triangle this season for this group. The Canadiens now have lost all nine games that required either overtime or a shootout. It’s a statistic that can’t be explained and defies logic. Yet it’s becoming an all-too-familiar scenario.
“If we get into these situations again, coming down the stretch, something’s got to change,” Suzuki said. “I don’t know if we’re in our heads about it. Everyone has to do better in overtime to get those wins.”
Ducharme continues to start overtime periods with the trio of Phillip Danault, Paul Byron and defenceman Jeff Petry. And the Canadiens continue getting burned by the philosophy — not that they could be blamed for the defeat on this night.
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Instead, on the ensuing rush after Josh Anderson missed the net on a breakaway, Vancouver’s J.T. Miller got possession of the puck. He went wide on Tomas Tatar, a forward, upon entering the Canadiens’ zone. Then Miller put a drag move on Suzuki, another forward. Allen failed to poke-check the puck away and Miller scored on a backhander for his ninth goal this season.
It seems that no matter which players Ducharme puts on the ice, he guesses wrong. Nonetheless, other teams have been known to start overtime with a trio of offensive forwards, sending a message the club’s going for the immediate kill. But Ducharme, now 4-3-5 since replacing the fired Claude Julien, refused to question his strategy.
“You have to look at everyone’s stripes,” he said. “I think our offensive guys are smart and have good hands (but) they don’t beat guys with pure speed. They build together.”
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Ducharme said he could start overtime, for argument’s sake, with Tyler Toffoli, who leads the team in goals, the swift Jonathan Drouin and Anderson. But then, he wondered, what would happen if they don’t have possession of the puck?
“They’d have to defend and waste their energy there before they finally get the puck and we need to change,” he explained. “I thought everything was fine. We got the (Anderson) breakaway. But it’s overtime and we got beat on the next play. I don’t think (the loss) comes from the way we started.
“I’m sure a guy like (Anderson) going on a breakaway, he’s probably putting more pressure on himself, thinking I’m going to end it this time. It happens. He missed it. That’s a part of it but we’ve got to stick with it. Next time we’ll get it.”
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While the Canadiens can get revenge on the Canucks as early as Saturday night when they meet in a rematch — the second match of a six-game homestand — Montreal continues to struggle on home ice, its record now 5-5-2, the worst of any team in the North Division.
Vancouver, conversely, is on a four-game winning streak and has pulled to within one point of the Canadiens for fourth place, and the final playoff berth, in the division — although Montreal has played four fewer games.
Nonetheless, had the Canadiens won even four of those nine extra-period games they’ve lost, they’d be challenging Toronto and Edmonton for first place. Instead, they’re fighting for their playoff lives. And that, in this city, is disconcerting.
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2021-03-20 11:58:08Z
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