Canadiens playoff notebook: The matchup game and how St. Louis once lifted Slafkovský

AtlanticBruinsCanadiensLightningMaple LeafsPanthersRed WingsSabresSenatorsMetropolitanBlue JacketsCapitalsDevilsFlyersHurricanesIslandersPenguinsRangersCentralAvalancheBlackhawksBluesJetsMammothPredatorsStarsWildPacificCanucksDucksFlamesGolden KnightsKingsKrakenOilersSharksScores & ScheduleStandingsPodcastsFantasyNHL OddsNHL PicksNHL playoff predictionsBracketStanley Cup tiersNHL Draft rankingRed Light NewsletterNHL Playoffs Juraj Slafkovský can relate to what Kirby Dach has been going through with the Canadiens in the playoffs. Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images Share articleMONTREAL — The Montreal Canadiens are up 2-1 in their first-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning despite not getting a single goal at five-on-five from their top line of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský. That top line has produced on the power play and was a big reason the Canadiens won Game 1 behind a power-play hat trick from Slafkovský. But they did it in Game 3 with depth scoring, which was a major concern entering the series. “I don’t think it really matters who scores the goals,” Slafkovský said after an optional practice at Bell Centre on Saturday. “It matters that we win the game.” After Game 3, Suzuki was asked repeatedly about his line’s inability to break through at five-on-five, something he himself pointed to after a Game 2 overtime loss in Tampa. “They’re game planning over there pretty hard on our line,” Suzuki said Friday night. This is a new reality for Suzuki’s line. While he has centered the Canadiens’ top line for years, it is only this season that it has emerged as one of the top lines in the NHL, a line that requires a game plan in a playoff series. Lightning head coach Jon Cooper has given the assignment of shadowing Suzuki’s line to his duo of Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel, with a combination of Jake Guentzel and Nikita Kucherov playing with them. “It’s a game plan we put in,” Cooper said Saturday. “I wouldn’t sit here and say everything’s worked for us, but that sure has.” Kucherov has also been limited to one goal at five-on-five in the series and Brayden Point is, well, pointless at even strength, so it’s not as if the Suzuki line is alone in that department. But it is clear the Canadiens have a much better chance of winning the series if this line gets going five-on-five. Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis has the option of splitting Slafkovský from Suzuki and Caufield, as he did for a good chunk of this season, but he doesn’t sound like a coach who is ready to do that. He remains confident in their ability to break through because there is a proven track record there, but also because that line’s performance is not solely based on production. “I mean, where do I start? You’re talking about really elite players,” St. Louis said. “They have a hard matchup, and I’m OK with who they’re on the ice against. Do I try to help them during the game? Yes, I do. But I’m confident of how responsible they’re going to be, and they’re going to still generate (offence). I feel like they probably want to generate more, but you have three elite players that are trying to answer to the critics without hurting the team. It’s a fine line. “What if they go explode five-on-five and we lose 5-4? What are we going to talk about? That’s a great job, you got the first line going, but we lose the game. So it’s a fine line. Those guys, they’re always a big part of our success, whether they’re on the scoresheet offensively or not, because they rack up a lot of minutes against some really good players. So, they’re going to be fine.” Part of the reality of what allowed Kirby Dach’s newly formed line to produce all three Canadiens goals in Game 3 is the fact that Suzuki’s line is eating those more difficult minutes to allow the rest of the team to thrive underneath those minutes. The same is true on defence, where the third pairing of Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble are putting up incredible underlying numbers in limited minutes against the underbelly of Tampa Bay’s lineup. This is often where playoff series are won or lost, further down the lineup, and so far, the Canadiens have benefited from that. But at some point, they will need that top line to break through. Back on Oct. 29, 2023, the Canadiens left for a three-game road trip to Las Vegas, Arizona and St. Louis. It was Slafkovský’s second NHL season, and after collecting an assist in the season opener that year, he had gone seven games without a point when he boarded that plane bound for Las Vegas. There was rumbling in Montreal that Slafkovský should be sent to the AHL, that the Canadiens were botching the development of the 2022 No. 1 pick at the NHL Draft. He was struggling. In that game in Las Vegas, Slafkovský did not register a single shot on goal, let alone a point, and did the same in Arizona three nights later. Suddenly, that noise about his development and a trip to the minors began resonating not only in Montreal, but around the league. There was a lot of noise around him, and there were internal talks that perhaps the Canadiens should indeed send him to the AHL to get his confidence back. But St. Louis would have none of it. He wanted to not only keep Slafkovský, but in the Canadiens’ next game, he promoted Slafkovský to his top line, the first time he played with Suzuki and Caufield. It was very similar to St. Louis’ decision to not only keep Dach in the lineup for Game 3, but move him back to centre and ask him to drive a line with Zack Bolduc and Alexandre Texier. The confidence Dach felt from his coach in Game 3 is something Slafkovský felt back then in 2023, when he felt like the entire world was against him, everyone except his coach. “I was just super happy,” Slafkovský said. “I kind of felt confident on the inside because I knew he was still trusting me, still giving me the opportunity.” He definitely saw a similarity between his own situation and the one Dach faced after his mistakes in overtime cost the Canadiens Game 2 in Tampa. “You can’t even explain how much it helps when your coach trusts you that way,” he said. “Because inside of you, you feel like s—, you feel like the past couple of games didn’t go your way, you’re not really confident at the moment. But when Marty trusts you, I feel like when the game starts, you don’t even think about what happened (before). You just want to prove it to yourself and prove it to him that you deserve to play. “I feel like that’s what’s been happening here, either with me or Kirby yesterday. It was a beautiful game for him.” St. Louis wasn’t always a Hall of Fame player. He had to scratch and claw his way there, but in order to get there, he needed to find a coach willing to give him that trust, and once he got it, he thrived and proved that coach right. He knows how it feels to have the impression the world is against you, except in his case, it was the hockey world and not necessarily the fans and the media. One is a lot noisier than the other, but both require trust from a coach to allow a player to emerge on the other side of it. The Canadiens generally have a penalty kill mindset that calls for controlled aggression, to remain in their structure to take away the middle of the ice but still identify moments where they can aggressively attack the puck carrier. That mindset does not apply in this series. Whenever Kucherov gets the puck, usually on the half wall on the right side of the power play, the Canadiens have a forward running at him immediately, pressuring him and forcing him to make a quick decision with the puck. Kucherov did exactly that in the first period of Game 2 when Alex Newhook aggressively closed on him while the Canadiens were attempting to kill off one of two penalties to goaltender Jakub Dobeš. Kucherov quickly moved the puck down low to Guentzel, and he immediately found Point in the slot for his first goal of the series. But by and large, the Canadiens’ strategy has forced the Lightning to adjust, because in a perfect world their power play flows through Kucherov. “He’s obviously their best player and their quarterback; they want to run it all through him,” Canadiens centre Jake Evans. “I guess in a way it makes them have to switch things up and look for different options, which they did fine last game.” Cooper says not every team does this to Kucherov, but obviously the dynamic is different in the regular season when you face a team one time as opposed to as many as seven times in a playoff series. “Through 82 games and playing 31 different teams, you get to see a whole bunch of different kills,” Cooper said. “Nobody’s reinventing the wheel, but there are different strategies to it. Some people leave him alone, some people come right at him, and he has this ability to find a way to pick them all apart. But he doesn’t do it all the time.” This is a major departure for Montreal’s penalty kill. They don’t do this with just anyone, but the Canadiens seem intent on forcing someone on the Lightning’s power play to beat them other than Kucherov. “Pressure’s tough,” Cooper said. “You’ve got to make real skilled plays in a short amount of time and it can be tough. “But if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s surely (No.) 86.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms