The Montreal Canadiens were counting on a win following the first period of their Saturday night matchup against the New York Rangers, who were coming in to Montreal on the second of back-to-back games and found themselves heading to the locker room trailing 3-0 after one.
“I told the guys after the first period, we're up 3-0 for one reason,” said Canadiens coach Claude Julien, “We capitalized on our chances, they didn't. We didn't dominate the first period.”
The Habs would take a 4-0 lead in the second frame before the Rangers began to mount a comeback, on goals from Filip Chytil, Pavel Buchnevich and Brendan Lemieux. This sudden resurgence really set the tone for the Rangers heading into the third period, but despite going down 5-3, the Rangers continued their push, en route to an eventual 6-5 road win over the Canadiens.
“Offensively, we're still a good team,” Julien said of the Canadiens. “But we have to figure it out defensively. We're not hard enough, we're not killing plays, and our backcheck wasn't good at all tonight. We played against a hungry team, even if they played last night, which is another reason this was unacceptable. After three games without a win, we should have been hungry to the point of not allowing these things to happen. So, it's unacceptable and we'll take control of this and we'll correct this situation.”
The Habs are now in the midst of a 4-game losing skid and, although, it's not quite time to panic, the club will need to take the appropriate steps necessary to turn things around and get a win, because this team is all too familiar with what happens when you let points slip away, having missed the playoffs by the narrowest of margins last season.
“You can't (explain) that, other than the fact that that's on us as a group,” said Canadiens alternate captain Brendan Gallagher. “(There's no one) else to point the finger at. That can't happen in this league. Too many guys, even when we had the lead — I definitely put myself in that category — weren't good enough. We had too many passengers tonight. We had a few guys going. But a lot of us, for whatever reason, weren't good enough.”
The players have taken ownership of the loss and certainly know they must do better in order to make the postseason in 2019-20.
“We know the importance, we don't need people to tell us,” said Gallagher. “We understand how tight it is (in the standings). We understand what we went through last year (in missing the playoffs despite earning 96 points). You can't let points slip away.”
Montreal will be looking to get back into the win column when they play host to an Atlantic Division rival, the Boston Bruins on Tuesday night.
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