Tomas Plekanec hit the nail of this ugly truth directly on the head.
“From the second part of the second period,” the Canadiens centreman said, “there was only one team out there.”
Ouch.
And that team wouldn’t be the Canadiens.
Despite a promising first period, in which they threw pretty much all they had at Chicago goaltender Corey Crawford, the Canadiens sagged and the Blackhawks stormed, the visitor pounding out a 5-0 victory Tuesday night at the Bell Centre.
It was the Habs’ third consecutive loss, having fallen 3-2 in overtime to the Canucks in Vancouver last Thursday, then taken it on the chin with a 6-2 home-rink loss to Calgary on Sunday.
The Canadiens were nearly skated into the ice in the first period by Calgary on the weekend, outshot 19-4.
At least they got out of the gate nicely on Tuesday, taking an 11-5 edge, if a 1-0 deficit, into their first-intermission dressing room.
And yet …
“Nothing’s working for us,” Plekanec admitted. “I thought we played a hard first period, we put a lot of pucks to the net.
“But we’ve got to take a step back, stay as positive as possible, and we’ve got to fight through it. We’ve got to help ourselves somehow.”
There’s no time to take that step back, of course, the Canadiens chartering out to Buffalo immediately after Tuesday’s undressing. And the way things are going for the Habs, the dreadful Sabres will choose Wednesday to play like the league-leading Anaheim Ducks.
This was the first career shutout in five decisions against the Canadiens for Chicago goalie Corey Crawford, a hometown whitewash for the Châteauguay native.
He would face 28 Canadiens shots, but after the first period was rarely tested seriously.
The Blackhawks, meanwhile, fired 32 at Carey Price in the Habs net. But blame total disorganization in front of Price for this loss, while crediting a couple of deft tip-ins on which he had no chance.
The last time Chicago blanked the Habs on Montreal ice by a five-goal margin was Dec. 1, 1973, a 5-0 victory backstopped by Tony Esposito. Tuesday’s win was Chicago’s first at the Bell Centre since Dec. 3, 2001.
“I wouldn’t say it was a letdown,” Plekanec argued mildly of his team’s second-period deflation. “They scored off the (first-period) power play and had that second goal. We were making mistakes when we wanted to do too much.
Chicago Blackhawks right wing Marian Hossa, bottom, attempts a shot against Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price as Chicago Blackhawks center Andrew Shaw looks on during the second period at the Bell Centre on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014.
“They scored, started to move the puck a little better, and they didn’t give us much of a chance after that.”
Nor was Plekanec buying into the idea that, if a team is going to slump, this early stage in the season isn’t a horrible time to do it.
“That’s one way to look at it but we don’t want to go through a slump,” he said. “Is this a slump? Probably. We have to fight through it and focus on the job, play the way we did in the first period.
“It’s not the first time we’ve gone through something like this. We did last year and in we have in years before. It’s starting from the basics — making the little plays right, the little passes, nothing complicated.”
The first period gave anxious fans reason to believe that this game might snap the mini-skid.
And they came to raucous life midway through the first when Price made a save that simply didn’t compute.
From close range, in a wild scrum in front of the Canadiens net after Price had kicked away a Chicago shot, Blackhawks winger Jeremy Morin had his team’s first goal — had this been in a normal universe.
Somehow, and even replays can’t explain it, Price spun, plunged at his crossbar and literally punched the puck over his net.
This isn’t a stop made in hockey, it’s a leaping spike that’s made at the net in volleyball.
Price has probably made more important saves in his career; every one in the playoffs would qualify, given what’s at stake. But this one was a beauty, a pageant-winner all by its lonesome.
Naturally, the Blackhawks would score 61 seconds later, sticking a pin in the balloon of a still-buzzing crowd. The spoilsport was Chicago captain Jonathan Toews, who tipped home a shot by defenceman Duncan Keith with Canadiens rearguard Alex Emelin serving a hooking penalty from the madness of a minute earlier.
You suspected, no matter how nicely they had pressed from puck-drop, that the Canadiens weren’t going to get on the scoreboard first. Ten times in a dozen games before Tuesday — now 11 of 13 — the Habs were beaten to the punch. Not once this season have they led a game after 20 minutes.
But this time wasn’t because they were flat-footed or listless or stalled in the starting gate. The Habs even dominated the first, the visitors managing just one more shot than those taken by Montreal defenceman Andrei Markov.
Price’s volleyball spike wasn’t his only wondrous stop. Pressing deep into the second period, he made a sprawling kick save, plunging across the crease to rob Marian Hossa on a shot the 1,000-point sniper does not miss.
After the overtime loss in Vancouver and a blowout defeat at the hands of Calgary, head coach Michel Therrien chose to gently stir up his roster, scratching forward Travis Moen and inserting Michaël Bournival for his first game of the year.
The 22-year-old skated two shifts for 1:29 in the first period, then three more for 3:06 in the second. In the end, Bournival played 13 shifts for 8:35, a game low, with two shots and a hit. Which is 13 shifts and 8:35 more than the action seen by Jiri Sekac, who was a healthy scratch for the seventh straight game.
Therrien surely has something in mind, you’d think, for the coveted 22-year-old from the Czech Republic who chose the Canadiens over a dozen other teams and now grows mouldy waiting for another chance.
We could see something up his sleeve on Wednesday, when he hopes his team can take wing in Buffalo. If only the awful Sabres didn’t suddenly look like a gargantuan hill to climb.
