Canadiens’ Growing Pains on Display in Loss to Senators
The Montreal Canadiens are the youngest team in the NHL. That’s not a new revelation-it’s been the backdrop to everything they’ve done this season.
And with youth comes inconsistency, both in execution and in identity. Tuesday night’s 5-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators was another reminder that for all the promise this team holds, they’re still learning how to put it all together.
Head coach Martin St. Louis has leaned heavily on his veterans to help balance that inexperience, but even that safety net is showing signs of wear.
Take Jake Evans, for example. He came into the night with a team-worst minus-12 rating, not ideal for a defensive-minded center whose main job is to keep the puck out of the net.
That job gets even harder when most of your shifts start in the defensive zone, but the numbers don’t lie: the Canadiens had been outscored 18-7 at five-on-five with Evans on the ice before the puck dropped against Ottawa.
St. Louis didn’t single out Evans directly when asked about his struggles. Instead, he pointed to a broader issue.
“I think as a group, our defensive game has lacked consistency,” he said.
But actions speak louder than words. Evans finished the night minus-3 and spent most of the third period watching from the bench. Joe Veleno took over his role down the stretch, logging over five minutes in the final frame compared to just one minute for Evans.
St. Louis did offer praise for Veleno’s ability to kill penalties and provide reliable depth, but the message was clear: if you're not getting it done, someone else will.
The same theme applied to Brendan Gallagher. One goal in 24 games is far from what the Canadiens need from a player who’s supposed to bring energy and finish.
St. Louis again didn’t throw Gallagher under the bus, but he did acknowledge the team has strayed from the high-pressure identity that helps players like Gallagher thrive.
“I feel like we’ve lost a little bit of our identity in the last three or four games,” St. Louis said.
“We’ve talked about getting back to being more on our toes. That helps Gally’s game.”
That identity crisis centered on the neutral zone-where the Canadiens want to apply pressure, force turnovers, and keep the play away from their own end. Against the Senators, they did a better job of that. But plugging one hole only opened another.
Down two goals in the third, Gallagher got knocked down in the offensive zone by Nick Jensen and looked to the ref for a call. He didn’t get one.
On the way back, he retaliated with a hit of his own-and this time, the whistle blew. As Gallagher and Senators goalie Linus Ullmark headed to the bench on the delayed penalty, Brady Tkachuk buried the dagger to make it 5-2.
Just four Canadiens were in the zone. The game was still within reach until that moment.
It wasn’t a veteran moment for Gallagher.
Still, this loss wasn’t just about Evans or Gallagher. The Canadiens were disorganized in their own end.
Ottawa scored four of their five goals from high-danger areas, often with little resistance. On Fabian Zetterlund’s opening goal, Evans was caught in no-man’s land.
Zack Bolduc and Evans were both out of position on Artem Zub’s goal. And it didn’t get much better from there.
Jake Sanderson’s goal made it three in a row from the slot. Evans, Jayden Struble, and Lane Hutson all ended the night at minus-3.
Struble summed it up bluntly: “Honestly, I’ve got to watch them, because I was on the ice for three of them. But yeah, we were leaving the slot open.
I would pick my head up and the slot was open and they would score. I don’t really know.
I’ve got to watch what happened.”
The Canadiens had made the neutral zone a point of emphasis heading into the game-and to their credit, they cleaned it up. But this team has been playing whack-a-mole with its issues all season. Fix one area, and another starts to leak.
Earlier in the year, it was the third period that haunted them. Then it was the second.
Then it was the neutral zone. Now it’s the defensive zone again.
Captain Nick Suzuki acknowledged that hesitation has crept into their game, especially defensively.
“I thought recently we lost our aggressiveness a little bit,” Suzuki said. “Guys are kind of deferring to sitting in our one-two-two when there’s opportunities to pressure. Even defensively I think we’re a bit hesitant where we were killing plays before and not letting them breathe.”
He added that the neutral zone was better-especially compared to their last outing in Colorado, where the Avalanche picked them apart-but the defensive zone still left a lot to be desired.
“I thought we just let them get some easy ones, guys just standing out in front with nobody around them,” Suzuki said, his voice trailing off.
There’s still plenty of reason for optimism in Montreal. Despite their flaws, the Canadiens are in a decent spot in the standings and remain in the playoff hunt.
That’s no small feat for the league’s youngest roster. But as Tuesday’s game showed, there’s still a long way to go before this team puts it all together.
Juraj Slafkovský, who played a season-high 22:34 and opened the scoring with his eighth goal of the year, put it best.
“We fix one thing and then another thing slips a bit, and it shouldn’t be like that,” he said. “It’s up to every single guy in here to make sure, even if we change a little bit of our system, that we are still sharp with the other things that we have to do. No matter what.”
That’s the challenge for a young team. St.
Louis didn’t use their youth as an excuse, and he shouldn’t. But when your most reliable veterans are either stapled to the bench or taking costly penalties in crunch time, the margin for error shrinks even more.
Montreal’s ceiling is high. But if they want to reach it, they’ll need everyone-young and old-to be sharper, more disciplined, and a whole lot more consistent.