Let me start this by saying that no matter what adjustments could have been made, Carolina was winning this series. But a surprising level of hubris from Martin St. Louis didn’t help Montreal’s chances.
The Hurricanes have earned the right to say ‘this is how we play and we’re not changing anything’. Under Rod Brind’Amour, they’ve played a high-pressure system for years, slowly bringing in players who fit that system, slowly improving each time. They’ve gone through a lot of disappointment over the years but the slow improvement made the resolve worth it. And now, after years of failure, it’s paying off.
The Habs, on the other hand, aren’t remotely good enough or proven enough to operate in the same manner. This is, after all, a roster with several identifiable holes that still need to be addressed. Emerging from a rebuild takes time as it takes a while to find all the right pieces. The Canadiens appear to be well on their way to doing so – they played a solid first two rounds – but they’re not there yet.
With that in mind, the stubbornness exhibited by St. Louis in this series was a little puzzling. He referenced that a team can’t entirely change the way it plays series to series. After all, there are many habits ingrained over an 82-game season and a couple of playoff rounds. He’s not wrong about that.
But there’s a difference between not changing the way a team plays and not making game-to-game adjustments to try to counter and improve upon what isn’t working. No one asked for the former but very little was done to attempt the latter.
From a tactics standpoint, their tendency to retreat and hold the puck played right into Carolina’s style. It was known heading into the series and Montreal didn’t change a thing. Well, unless you count trying different spots on the ice for the 100-foot passes that rarely worked and predominantly went for icings. Yes, the Habs are a transition team but if you can’t spark transition, they could have at least brought a forward back as a passing outlet to lessen the reliance on the 100-foot pass. That goes against their style of play but it probably would have resulted in fewer shots on Jakub Dobes, and may have saved a goal or two along the way.
Offensively, there was little variance in zone entries. Skate it in, quick drop pass with a defender right there, and that was that way too often. They’re not a chip-and-chase team but there was minimal mixing it up in that regard. On the power play, there was one zone entry in the series that caught the Hurricanes off guard. Lane Hutson drove the middle, the defence didn’t react well, and they scored on it. They never tried it again. Instead, it was routinely slingshot to set up an entrance on the side boards with multiple defenders waiting for them. And more often than not, the entry was broken up.
This isn’t materially changing how they play; these are small tweaks that simply weren’t attempted. There’s something to be said for having confidence in your system. But continuing in spite of overwhelming evidence that says things aren’t working isn’t necessarily confidence, but rather stubbornness or arrogance. The Habs haven’t been good enough for long enough for that type of inflexibility.
Then there’s the lineup tweaking. Or, more specifically, the lack of it. In the first round, St. Louis made several lineup changes. In the second round, Joe Veleno came in after sitting all of the first. But against Carolina, once the series started, there was one lineup change the rest of the way, Veleno getting back in for Oliver Kapanen for Game 3. I had my doubts about Brendan Gallagher and Arber Xhekaj in this series given their lack of speed but St. Louis could have tried putting one of them in for a spark. Or, even one of the Black Ace recalls whose speed could have allowed the fourth line to keep up more.
In terms of in-game line tweaking, it happened twice. Both times, the game was completely out of hand. In Game 4, the changes started in the second period and they had one of their better periods of the series. Something new gave them a bit of a spark. But in Game 5, it was back to the usual, with changes only coming when they were down by five. Think back to Game 6 of the Buffalo series. The Sabres were on the ropes and came into Montreal with a bunch of new trios, ones that caught the Canadiens off guard and that was a big part in the Sabres pushing the series to seven. Montreal never played that card in the series either.
I’ll also note that the Habs didn’t lean heavily into line matching. That’s consistent with how they approached the first two rounds but that’s also something they could have tried in an effort to try to stabilize things a little bit.
Look, at the end of the day, had St. Louis done some of these things, would it have changed the outcome of the series? Almost certainly not. The Habs ran out of gas against a better, healthier, and more experienced team. A tweak here and there wasn’t getting the Canadiens three more wins and a bunch of extra goals. But it might have bought them something else positive, be it an extra goal scored, one less allowed, and maybe enough to get another game out of the series at least. I don’t know and they don’t know. And that’s the point.
Over the course of the summer, when St. Louis is sitting back and reflecting on the series, is he going to be able to say to himself that he tried everything in his power to help his team against the Hurricanes? I don’t think he can. And I can’t help but wonder if he’s going to regret that. Frankly, I hope he does.
We correctly talk about Montreal’s roster being young and needing to go through the growing pains of these playoff failures to help sharpen them for the next time. The same goes for St. Louis and really his whole coaching staff, none of whom had won an NHL playoff series coming into this year. As it is a step in the learning process for the players, here’s hoping that it is for St. Louis as well. That way, the next time they’re in a situation like this (and there will be a next time), he might be more open-minded towards shaking things up in the hopes of generating a spark to get the team going again. They’ll probably be better off for it if he does.