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The Canadiens were in Los Angeles to wrap up their three-game California road trip, something that rarely ends well, and that had them at just a single point from the first two games this year. Less than 20 hours after finishing their previous game, they took to the ice to meet the Kings, who are in a fight for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference.

They did manage to pull out a 4-3 win from this game and a .500 result for the road trip, but it was far from a dominant performance. Solid goaltending by Jakub Dobes and timely scoring by the top line overcame the strong play of the Kings and the defensive errors of the Habs. Still, one takes wins any way one can get them.

Habs Starting Lines

Caufield – Suzuki – Slafkovsky
Newhook – Kapanen – Demidov
Bolduc – Evans – Dach
Anderson – Danault – Gallagher

Matheson – Guhle
Hutson – Dobson
Xhekaj – Carrier

Dobes
Montembeault

Ten Thoughts

1) It was a fairly uneventful start to the game, but as the first period approached the halfway point, the Kings started to apply pressure. An LA rush resulted in the game’s first power play, as Kaiden Guhle high-sticked Alex Laferriere, just before Mike Matheson hauled the forward down for good measure.

2) The Kings gave the bleu blanc et rouge a bit of a schooling in power play work, with controlled zone entries, good control and movement–and shooting, with five pucks on net, and two more shot attempts that went wide. Still, the Habs’ penalty-killers were able to keep the shots to the outside, and Dobes was solid in stopping the ones that did get through.

3) Four minutes after finishing the kill, though, the Kings broke through. Brendan Gallagher made a controlled entry into the offensive zone along the right-hand boards and passed to Noah Dobson. The Kings quickly stripped Dobson of the puck, though, and went into an attack on their own. Mike Matheson was able to take the puck off Artemi Panarin in the Habs’ zone, but stumbled and lost the puck to Adrian Kempe. Kempe then passed the puck across the ice to Anze Kopitar, who was driving for the Montreal net, and the veteran centre beat Dobes with a tip from about ten feet away. Gallagher couldn’t cut off the pass, and Dobson appeared not to have noticed the arrival of Kopitar at all.

4) That first period was rather grim, and not because of the early Los Angeles lead. The real problem is highlighted by the fact that the Habs managed to record but a single shot in the period. Yes, it was the second half of a back-to-back. Yes, yes, selective shooting. Yes, yes, yes, for six minutes of the period, the Kings were on a power play. But that shot count was accompanied by a 24% Corsi (shot attempt share), 15% scoring chance share, and an xGF percentage under 5. Teams simply cannot win games with that kind of play, regardless of goaltending.

5) The Habs did get a second shot on net only about three minutes into the second, and Jake Evans made it count, putting the Canadiens on the board and tying up the game. He took a pass from Kirby Dach at the top of the circle and then waited a few moments, letting Dach get in front of the net and into the field of vision of Darcy Kuemper. A slap shot found its way through and evaded Kuemper, giving Evans his ninth goal of the year.

6) At 15:41, it was Nick Suzuki carrying the puck into the offensive zone, before passing it to Juraj Slafkovsky. The big Slovak turned around and shook off Scott Laughton to move in front of the net. He maintained control until he unleashed a wrister into the top right corner of the net, above Kuemper’s glove. A good pass by Suzuki set this up, but it was a superb individual effort by Slafkovsky that made it happen. That’s 50 points now, including 22 goals, and he still has 20 games remaining in the season. A 60-point season looks likely, with 30 goals a possibility.

7) The Kings got that back two minutes later, though, with Laughton redeeming himself with a spin-o-rama shot from the side of the net that went between Matheson’s legs and then bounced off Dobes’s right pad and into the net. You could chalk this down to poor puck luck, but Alexandre Carrier was focused on Jared Wright, and no one was there to pick up the loose puck or take Laughton out of the play.

8) After a strong second period, the Habs looked like they had lost a step again, and the Kings started pressing again. It paid off for them seven minutes in, when a Trevor Moore wrist shot caromed off the crossbar and back to the top of the faceoff circle. Moore got the puck back to the front of the net, Brandt Clarke tried to whack it through, and finally Laughton put the rebound past Dobes to move the Kings back in front.

9) It was looking grim for the Canadiens already, with fewer than five minutes remaining in the game and the Kings still with the edge in play. However, Moore gifted a power play to the visitors by slashing the stick of Noah Dobson out of his hands, earning himself a trip to the box. After an initial puck clear, the potent top power play unit got to work. With the puck on Lane Hutson’s stick, Ivan Demidov moved to the side of the net, drawing the defenders there, and giving a clear shot to Slafkovsky, who made no mistake on the pass from Hutson to tie things back up.

10) With the adrenaline pumping from the Slafkovsky goal, Montreal kept up the pressure, and it took only 49 seconds after the tying tally for Suzuki to pot the winner. This time, it was Cole Caufield stripping the puck off Moore, sending a pass to Slafkovsky. The winger stopped the pass with his skate, got it onto his stick, and quickly sent a pass back over to Suzuki, whose one-time beat Kuemper for the winning goal.

HW Habs Three Stars

First Star: Juraj Slafkovsky (2g, 1a, 4 shots, +1, 16:38 TOI) was a force to be reckoned with after that dreadful first period. An outstanding effort on that 2-1 goal, and two more points in the third with the power play goal and the final assist. This is the Juraj Slafkovsky who deserved the #1 overall draft pick.

Second Star: Jakub Dobes (39 shots, 36 saves, .923 save %, +2.46 GSAx) still needs to improve the rebounds he gives up, but he made enough saves to enable the Habs to win this game: expected goals were about 5.5 to 3.2 in favour of the Kings, and Dobes needed to be solid, particularly in the third, to allow the Canadiens to leave town with the win in their collective back pocket.

Third Star: Arber Xhekaj (0g, 0a, 0 shots, +2, 9:10 TOI) played one of his best games in recent memory, not allowing many scoring chances and not taking foolish penalties. Not quite 10 minutes on the ice, but playing the kind of game a #6 defender needs to play, and Martin St-Louis rewarded him with a reasonable amount of ice time.