Martin St. Louis was feeling particularly pensive following the Montreal Canadiens’ 2-1 shootout loss to the Dallas Stars on Saturday night, a loss that felt like a win under the circumstances. St. Louis was proud of his team because, as he mentioned, the Canadiens managed to earn a point in the standings on a night they understandably did not have their fastball.
St. Louis was so pensive that a question about his star rookie defenceman’s ability to navigate a tight-checking third period against a quality team turned into a season review of his entire team.
“I think we’ve had a nice progression, evolution of our team in the last, I don’t know, five weeks maybe,” St. Louis began. “I can go as far back as that game we played in Washington. What was that, November?”
He was told it was in fact on Halloween night that his team played that game in Washington, the infamous “threw up all over ourselves” game. He snickered a bit at the thought. It seemed like ages ago.
“I can go as far back as that,” he continued. “I think from that point on, we took a different approach. It was a group decision. We didn’t quite get the success right away, but you could tell it was turning.”
St. Louis has been reluctant to take too much credit for what is happening to the Canadiens, choosing instead to say he is simply steering his players in the right direction but it is the players who are driving the bus. Except thinking back to that game in Washington as a turning point puts St. Louis at the forefront of that turnaround, because it was the following day that St. Louis ran his first NHL bag skate and it was during that bag skate that the buy-in St. Louis constantly refers to first began.
And the areas of the game in which the buy-in has been felt most have been puck management, decision-making and respecting the risk/reward calculation St. Louis is asking his players to make — namely that some risk is OK, but make sure that risk is worth it; that there is something valuable on the other side of that risk like an odd-man rush or a breakaway.
It is easy to say, but given the pace at which an NHL game is played, to make that calculation several times a game while also calculating a large data set of information can be challenging. Juraj Slafkovský has struggled with that calculation, and once he described all the information he needs to process before deciding whether to make a play or chip a puck in, you start to understand why. You need to count how many of your jerseys you see versus the number of their jerseys you see, you need to realize the score in the game, where you are on the ice, who you’re on the ice against, where the opposing players are positioned — all within a half second.
“I should know when to dump the puck and when to make an elite play,” Slafkovský said after practice Thursday. “We shouldn’t need to talk about this, it should be a normal thing, in my opinion. But obviously it’s something to talk about right now because it’s not the way I want it to be. It shouldn’t change the way I play. Even playmakers like Suzy, he dumps the puck in sometimes and he probably doesn’t overthink that and maybe I do. Maybe I think about it too much. If I’m dumping the puck twice, maybe the third time, when I really have to dump it, I try to make a play.
“It’s learning.”
Suzy, of course, is captain Nick Suzuki, and frankly, earlier in the season, he was not always making the right calculation either. He was trying plays in areas of the ice in which he shouldn’t have been trying those plays. But back in Washington, after that bag skate, Suzuki was front and centre to say the Canadiens players deserved that treatment. And he went about changing his habits on the ice.
“It’s kind of one of the first rules you learn in hockey, that you can’t turn pucks over at each blue line. So I grew up on that, in junior it was preached a lot, so I’m pretty comfortable with that,” Suzuki said. “Now, when I have the puck, if I have an opportunity to carry it, I’ll do that instead of chipping it in. I think I’m pretty good at reading the game of when I can and can’t do it. But I think I might have a bit of a longer leash with Marty allowing me to make plays.
“But I have to lead by example, too.”
Suzuki knows as the offensive leader of the team, he not only has a longer leash, but he is in fact counted on to make plays. And that role inherently leads to more turnovers. Despite the fact chipping a puck behind the opposing defence and getting on the forecheck basically goes against Suzuki’s DNA, he did it. Game after game. Because he knew his team needed it.
“I’ve definitely dumped more pucks in than maybe I would want to, but it was a point of emphasis for the team and I can’t go away from the game plan just based off how I feel,” he said. “It’s not hard to do. When we get in the O-zone, we’re a tough team to play against, we just weren’t getting too much time of possession inside, so that was a way for us to get in there and forecheck better.”
When St. Louis insists he is simply steering the players in a direction and they are the ones actually driving the bus, this is what he means. When St. Louis talks about buy-in, this is what he means. The Canadiens are far from perfect, but they are definitely playing to an identity — one they believe will bring them success, one that has already brought them more than two months of success, and one that has a central tenet to take care of the puck and make good decisions with it over and over again.
And it must be nice as a coach to have a captain who can take directions and drive a bus to its destination.
How old are the Canadiens?
One of St. Louis’ favourite analogies is comparing his team to a child, and how he wouldn’t ask a 5-year-old to do certain things he would expect from a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old. And the reality is for the better part of the last three years, St. Louis’ team has resembled a 5-year-old far more than a 15-year-old.
Except over the last two months or so, with the Canadiens playing at a better-than-.600 clip over a third of the season, his team has clearly changed age categories.
“We’re older,” St. Louis said when asked how old his team is now. “I don’t know exactly how old we are, but we’re definitely older.”
A good chunk of the team has been here throughout St. Louis’ time as coach, so his standards have definitely changed because of that symbolic growth in age, even if his team is still one of the youngest in the NHL.
“I’m more demanding on certain things because we’re further along, and the stuff’s been talked about for a while now, so it should be ingrained, processed,” he said. “So I’m more demanding, because we’re older. It’s been a progression.”
DeBoer on the evolution of analytics
Pete DeBoer has been coaching in the NHL essentially uninterrupted since 2008. Despite the Dallas Stars being his fifth NHL coaching job, he has never missed a full season since being first hired by the Florida Panthers back then. Before that, he coached for 13 consecutive seasons in the OHL for three teams after being hired as the head coach of the Detroit Whalers in 1995 at the age of 27.
That’s 30 straight years as a head coach. DeBoer has seen some things in this game.
Which is what made his views on analytics so interesting. We often hear St. Louis talk about the limitations of numbers, how they can guide you but how he ultimately relies on his eyes more than anything else.
DeBoer felt the same way for a long time. He doesn’t necessarily feel that way anymore.
“You know what, I was talking to somebody the other day about it. I think I’m much more bought into it now than I was five years ago, and I’ll tell you why,” DeBoer said after Stars practice Friday. “I think it’s because we’ve found a way to take all that information they were dumping on us five years ago and now we’ve got it where we’re getting information that we can actually use, that’s applicable, that’s important to us. Five years ago, it was almost like a dump. And I think every team has worked hard at it, like what are the definitions you want to use to pare that giant file of data down to workable numbers that are important to your analysis?”
DeBoer said analytics now guide some of the tactical decisions he makes for his team.
“I think we lean on a lot of them,” DeBoer said. “If you look at, as an example, breakouts. We’ll probably have that pared down to eight or 10 categories down from 30, but we look at all the ones that are important to us, those eight or 10. Who’s getting first touch on breakouts? Who’s exiting with possession? Are they exiting weak side? Strong side? So in that subcategory of things that are important to you in those areas, that’s what’s been the process the last five years, taking those 30-something categories and getting them down to five or six that you can use.”
DeBoer, like St. Louis, said it’s “dangerous” to look at analytics before the 25- or 30-game mark of the season because the sample is not predictive enough until you’ve collected enough data. But one thing he differs from St. Louis on is DeBoer trusts the numbers to such an extent that he is at least willing to allow them to guide him in making tactical decisions, even if they don’t necessarily match up with his eye test.
“Yeah, for sure now,” he said. “But I will say it’s rare that it happens. They usually line up.”
Martin St. Louis giving instructions to Juraj Slafkovský in Columbus. (Ben Jackson / Getty Images)
An accepted member of the coaching fraternity?
Considering how long DeBoer has been in the game, and how long he had to ride buses coaching in the OHL, what does he think of St. Louis’ quick ascension to an NHL job? Does he wonder why St. Louis didn’t need to pay his dues the way DeBoer did?
Not at all.
“No, because I think Marty paid his dues, he just paid them a different way,” DeBoer said. “He played for a long time under some great coaches. I usually have a player every year, every other year, that I can tell is going to be a really good coach when he’s done. And he doesn’t need to spend 10 years honing his craft to do that. You can just tell. Some guys are coaching while they’re playing, they’re just those types of players.
“Joe Pavelski was a guy like that for me. Some of those guys don’t need a long apprenticeship just because of who they are. But it’s not common. I think you have to have a very high hockey IQ, you have to have a certain type of work ethic and love of the game.”
DeBoer also mentioned Ryane Clowe, who played under him in New Jersey, and Joel Ward, who played for him in San Jose and is currently an assistant coach with the Vegas Golden Knights, as other players he believed would make great coaches. They are more typical of the types of players who make good coaches or role players, or at least players who were not the stars.
Pavelski and St. Louis are not in that same category of player, but they do have something in common.
“Pav had a worker-like mentality but was a world-class player,” DeBoer said. “I think Marty had similar characteristics to that.”
Pavelski was a seventh-round pick who worked for everything he got. St. Louis was never drafted and worked for everything he got. Perhaps that is why even though Hall of Fame players rarely make good coaches, St. Louis has been an exception to that rule.
“I think when I played, especially halfway through my career in the NHL, I felt like I was coaching, too,” St. Louis said. “I felt I was coaching my linemates, I was challenging coaches, tell me why we’re doing this a certain way. I always had that kind of mind … I didn’t know if I was going to have success, but I was going to do things I believe in. And I think my experience helps me have a good base of what my truth is about the game.”
A second visit to Montreal for Beau Duchene
There was a cute little visitor in the Stars dressing room Saturday for the morning skate. Stars forward Matt Duchene had his son, Beau, tagging along, two days after his sixth birthday. It was Beau’s first visit to Montreal since the summer of 2019 when he was only a few months old.
Beau visited the Bell Centre on that first visit as well, but it was under very different circumstances.
“It was for my free-agency visit,” Duchene said.
Yes, it’s easy to forget that back in 2019, the Canadiens heavily courted Duchene as an unrestricted free agent. He recalls getting the Bell Centre tour with his wife and then-infant son, and a little gesture from Canadiens owner Geoff Molson.
“He knew I was a big Maurice Richard guy, coming from a Habs family,” Duchene said. “So he made Habs jerseys with Duchene on the back and No. 9 for me and my son. I still have them, mine and this tiny one for him.”
If you’re wondering how recent Canadiens history might have changed had Duchene decided to sign with Montreal that year, you shouldn’t bother. Duchene wound up signing a seven-year, $56 million contract with the Nashville Predators, a contract that was somewhat stunningly bought out before last season, allowing him to sign consecutive one-year, $3 million deals in Dallas where he has performed very well.
But being bought out by Nashville didn’t mean Duchene turned his back on the city. In fact, he kept his house there.
“I’ll eventually live there when I retire,” he said.
Yeah, Montreal never stood a chance of signing this guy.
(Top photo of Nick Suzuki: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
