In the Habs’ Room: First period in Columbus saw ‘careless’ mistakes

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Martin St. Louis called it the Canadiens’ worst period of the season.

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The head coach added that the Canadiens were lucky they were only down 2-0 instead of 5-0 after the first period of Thursday night’s 6-4 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena.

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“We were just kind of going all in on certain plays and not, I guess, protecting the downside if something bad happens,” St. Louis said about the first 20 minutes. “We gave up breakaways … to me it’s the breakaways that stick out to me more than the goals that we got scored on, and some of those breakaways were self-inflicted. It was just being careless a little bit.”

Added captain Nick Suzuki: “I think they had four or five breakaways in that first period and we definitely weren’t happy with our start. I think we might have taken it for granted with all their injuries.”

The Blue Jackets are missing several key players — including goalie Elvis Merzlikins, top defenceman Zach Werenski and forward Patrik Laine — and came into the game with the worst record in the Eastern Conference. They improved their record to 6-9-1 and caught up to the Ottawa Senators, who are also 6-9-1. The Canadiens fell to 8-8-1.

Apart from the first-period breakaways the Canadiens gave up, they also had extended shifts in their own zone and turned over pucks in the neutral zone. It wasn’t pretty.

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The Canadiens cleaned things up after the first period and got goals from Jordan Harris, Josh Anderson, Brendan Gallagher and Nick Suzuki. They outshot the Blue Jackets 31-18 over the final two periods and 42-29 for the game.

“I think we learned a tough lesson tonight,” Gallagher said. “The first period might have been our worst period of the year. We fell behind the 8-ball and it doesn’t matter what you do after that. It’s too tough to come back in this league. You can do it every once in a while, but you can’t expect to do it. You can never win the game in the first (period), but you can certainly make it real tough on yourselves and almost lose the game. I think that’s what we did tonight. The first period just wasn’t good enough.”

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St. Louis believes in concepts instead of systems and wants his young players to play without the fear of making mistakes. There were plenty of them in the first period. The coach made some tactical adjustments during the first intermission, but he doesn’t want his young players to stop taking some risks when warranted instead of just playing safe.

“The way they’re allowed to play, it keeps us in a lot of games,” St. Louis said. “There’s not one part of me during that second period that I thought we were going to lose this game because of the young guys and how good they are and what they’re able to do and how they play and help us get momentum back. They don’t go into a hiding shell and they don’t try to survive out there. They’re trying to live and it shows in the brand that we’re playing.”

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Suzuki said players were getting away from the game plan during the first period.

“All of us have to be on the same page for things to work,” said the captain, who scored his team-leading 11th goal of the season. “We’ve had problems with that before. Guys try to ad-lib and it doesn’t help our team. All five guys need to be playing the same concepts and systems and I think we need to do a better job of that.”

First periods like the one against the Blue Jackets can be expected with such a young team, but Gallagher wasn’t willing to buy that excuse.

“I think that’s being too nice on us,” he said. “There’s certain expectations on us as a group and we put that on ourselves and we tell you that because we believe it. It’s not OK. It’s not OK to not be mentally sharp in the first period like we were and it was every single guy, except our goaltender (Sam Montembeault). Tough lesson certainly and one that we have to learn. The thing that I like about our group a lot, though, is when we learn these lessons we’ve been able to respond and make sure they don’t creep into our game. Hopefully that’s the case again.

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“We know we can score,” Gallagher added. “You’re down 2-0, but there’s 40 minutes (left). You know we’re going to score two goals. That’s the expectation. It’s just a matter of cleaning up the mistakes and making sure that you don’t end up giving up five, six goals and make it too tough on yourself.”

If there was a bright spot for the Canadiens, it’s that they showed once again they never give up.

“We never quit no matter what the score is,” Suzuki said. “We got a pretty young team and we just need to find out how to win in this league. It’s hard.”

scowan@postmedia.com

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