Game 8: Montreal Canadiens vs. St. Louis Blues

Start time: 7:00 p.m. EDT / 4:00 p.m. PDT
In Canada: CityTV, Sportsnet East (English)TVA Sports (French)
In the blues area: Bally Sports Midwest
Streaming: ESPN+, Sportsnet+

When the NHL schedule was first released, the Canadiens perhaps foresaw that there would be three days off that week and believed that would be a good break after the first seven games. Instead, they spent that time working on basic details of their defensive play, as not only have they gotten off to a 2-4-1 start, but they also haven’t made any real progress in their game since the season began over two weeks ago.

Martin St-Louis complains about the passivity of the players in the defensive zone. This is a strange occurrence because the Canadiens have used an aggressive penalty kill to become one of the most successful shorthanded teams to date, correcting a part of their game that was near the bottom of the league a season ago. The loss of their steadiest defender, Kaiden Guhle, only made the defensive woes of the last few games more apparent, and some glaring mistakes from the young additions to the blue line made things worse, leading to the team’s worst loss of the season on Tuesday.

We’ve seen so far that offense isn’t really the problem for the team; Their 25th-place goals per game average of 2.57 is largely due to how little time they were able to spend in the offensive zone, rather than a lack of skill or creativity. The power play is in the top third of the league and proves that the talent is there to score goals. The record looks bad to begin with, but it’s really just one area that’s been preventing the Canadiens from the outset from fulfilling the potential that’s been building over the past few years through the prospect pool and now into the pro ranks.

The first test after this week’s lessons is the St. Louis Blues, a team that achieved similar results in last year’s regular season series to the Habs’ performance of the New York Rangers three days ago. A 6-3 defeat last November was followed by a 7-2 defeat in February, when the Blues won the two-game set. The goal is to prevent such a number from appearing on the Bell Center scoreboard tonight.

The Blues’ chances of scoring six or more goals were reduced by an ankle injury to Robert Thomas. He collected two goals and four assists in the two-game series in 2023-24, contributing a total of 86 points for the season. But they still have Jordan Kyrou, their second-leading scorer from last year, who leads the league with nine points in eight games so far.

A top story this NHL season was the double tender lists St. Louis signed that limited the Edmonton Oilers to free agents Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, contracts that were not fulfilled by the 2024 Stanley Cup runner-up. That story has only gotten richer now that the season has begun and these two new additions have become key members of the Blues lineup. Defenseman Broberg is second on the team with seven points and plays about 20 minutes a night with his new team. Holloway has four points and sits sixth on the squad, boosted by a two-goal performance in the last game. That was a 5-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs and showed that this can be a dangerous offensive team even without Thomas.

They need to maintain this level to survive in a hotly contested race for the Central Division playoff spots. It’s the only division in which four teams have double-digit point totals, and even a 5-3 record is only enough for fourth place and a wild-card slot. The Winnipeg Jets (14 points), Minnesota Wild (12) and Dallas Stars (12) are at the top and show no signs of letting up. Utah HC is capitalizing on the energy of Salt Lake City’s new fan base and is off to a great start right behind them, and the Colorado Avalanche and Nashville Predators are perhaps the two biggest losers of the season so far, with better results to come. It will be a battle all season long in what may currently be the toughest group in the league this year.

St. Louis is off to a 3-1 start on the road, giving the group even more confidence heading into its second stop of a four-game trip away from Enterprise Center. The Canadiens are quickly working on their home schedule, tonight is the sixth of 41 games they will play in Montreal and they have lost the last three of those games. A home crowd desperate for a win, a team stumbling as it tries to take the next step in its rise, and the fact that this is the first game in a row and three games in four nights are everything Reasons for the Habs to put in their best performance of the season and get back into the win column.