Stu Cowan: Canadiens in need of another attitude adjustment
The Canadiens look like they need another attitude adjustment.
After Thursday’s 2-1 loss to the Islanders in New York, Andrew Shaw spoke from his heart and sent a strong message to his teammates.
“We haven’t had a game where every guy in the room has been going on the same night,” Shaw said. “That’s the type of team that we are. We need to be a team, playing hard. Everyone … all lines, all D, goalie, everyone’s got to be playing their best every night. Lines are taking nights off, players are taking nights off. It’s just we don’t have that bite.
“They came out to win the game from the start,” Shaw added. “They wanted to win more than we did.”
The Canadiens got off to a slow start — again — against the Islanders and the game could have been over after 20 minutes, but goalie Carey Price kept them in it. It’s hard to understand how a team fighting for its playoff life wasn’t ready for the start of such an important game.
![](https://postmediamontrealgazette2.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/0116-spt-habs-2.jpg?w=640)
Canadiens’ Jonathan Drouin holds off Florida Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov in Montreal on Jan. 15, 2019.
Who do you blame?
“It’s kind of hard to put your finger on it,” Brendan Gallagher said after practice Friday in Brossard. “To be honest, if I knew the answer I probably would have changed it last night.”
It’s easy to point a finger at the coaching staff, but I’ll point mine at the Canadiens’ leadership group that was supposed to be much improved this season, with the departure of captain Max Pacioretty after GM Marc Bergevin blamed a bad attitude on last season’s disaster. Coaches can lead players to the ice, but they can’t make them skate. Players need to hold each other accountable and that’s what Shaw did.
“I haven’t been perfect, either,” Shaw said after practice Friday. “We’ve got to hold each other accountable and go out there and work and have that last push we need. This is our playoffs right now, to push ourselves into a position here, and once you make playoffs anything can happen from there. I can’t tell you why (the urgency’s) not there, but I can tell you it’s going to be there.
“It’s not calling guys out,” Shaw added. “It’s just being on each other. We’re all men, we can handle it. We all want to win, we all want what’s best for this team. I know if I’m not playing well I want someone to tell me that I need to pick it up and I’m going to do the same to the guy next to me.”
Hopefully someone has spoken to Jonathan Drouin, who has no goals and four assists in the last 15 games — with all four assists coming in an 8-1 blowout win over the Detroit Red Wings on Feb. 26. While Drouin ranks third in team scoring with 17-33-50 totals, there are too many nights when his effort level isn’t where it should be and he seems to be playing in his own little world — sort of like the kid on the outdoor rink you couldn’t get the puck off but didn’t want on your team.
Drouin has averaged 17:23 of ice time this season, but Julien cut him back to 13:35 against the Islanders. Was the coach trying to send a message?
“I don’t have to stand here and explain everything about every player,” Julien said Friday. “You guys see the games, you see the results, you see what’s happening. So I’m just coaching.”
Former Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman and Lightning coach Jon Cooper can probably relate to what Julien is going through now after trading Drouin to the Canadiens last summer in exchange for Mikhail Sergachev.
Drouin isn’t the only Canadien struggling, but Bergevin gave the offensively gifted player a six-year, US$33-million contract to put points on the board. When Drouin’s not doing that, he doesn’t contribute much else.
Julien was asked if his players might simply be running out of gas after playing a demanding new system he put in place this season.
“No, absolutely not,” the coach said. “That would be the lamest excuse we could ever find. I think right now it’s more about having the willingness to do it. We’ve given the guys lots of rest. There’s no reason to be tired.
“We have all the tools that you can ask for and that we need to tell you whether the guys are tired or not — and they’re not,” Julien added.
The Canadiens have gone 6-9-1 in their last 16 games while watching their chances of making the playoffs drop to 35.9 per cent, according to sportsclubstats.com, after Thursday’s loss to the Islanders.
“If you think about it — how hard we’ve worked all year — if we don’t just push a little bit more than everything we did through the year, it was for nothing,” Shaw said. “So you got to have that mentality of just digging down, finding that next gear and keep going.”
They better find that next gear pretty quick.
Related
from Montreal Gazette https://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/nhl/hockey-inside-out/stu-cowan-canadiens-in-need-of-another-attitude-adjustment
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