NHL: St. Louis Blues at Montreal Canadiens
Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images

The Montreal Canadiens hosted the St. Louis Blues on Sunday night, hoping to push their winning streak to a third consecutive game.

Despite putting a relatively decent amount of shots on net, the Canadiens failed to take over the game, leading to a 4-3 win for the Blues.

Let’s dive into the highlights!

Lane Hutson Impact

The Blues opened a 1-0 lead via a very lucky deflection that landed directly on Brayden Schenn’s stick, but the Canadiens quickly responded when former St. Louis forward Zachary Bolduc found phenom Lane Hutson with a perfect pass.

Hutson made no mistake, using his excellent hand-eye coordination to score a highlight-reel goal. It was his fifth goal of the year in just 26 games, which is rather impressive when we considered he scored just six goals throughout his impressive, 82-game rookie campaign.

It should also be noted that Jared Davidson recorded his first NHL point on the play.

American Sniper

Team USA general manager Bill Guerin has already laid down the groundwork that will serve as his excuse not to invite Cole Caufield to the Olympics.

He wants players who can hit.

Which is fine, if the goal of the game was to out hit your opponents.

But as we saw at the 4 Nations Tournament, where Team USA struggled to score versus Team Canada, hitting is clearly not the most important factor in a hockey game.

Caufield scores a lot of goals, as evidenced by his 16th of the year versus the Blues on Sunday, and though it would be a shame if Team USA does end up snubbing him, a little rest in the middle of the 2025-26 schedule may not end up being the worst possible outcome from a Canadiens standpoint.

This Is A Rerun

Every few games we’re reminded there’s a lot of work left to be done before we can suggest the Habs are a defensively-sound organization.

Sunday night’s game provided a heavy-handed example, with the Blue scoring two goals in a little over a minute to open the second period.

Most players failed in their coverage, which suggests there’s probably a bigger issue at play.

If every driver on the road ends up speeding, it probably means the speed limit is too low, right?

The same logic can be applied here.

If every skater keeps losing their player while playing man-to-man, then we have to look at the system.

St. Louis’ fourth goal of the game came after yet another defensive breakdown. It started with Alex Carrier playing the man instead of the puck, which took Joe Veleno out of the play. Arber Xhekaj failed to shut down the 2 v1 pass, and Jakub Dobes was unable to make the save on Schenn.

It most cases, it’s way too simple to blame one individual for a poor play, and Sunday night provided us with a great reminder of that eternal hockey truth.

Late-Game Effort

To Montreal’s credit, they did put their best foot forward toward the end of the third period, which led to Noah Dobson’s fourth goal of the season.

Even though Martin St-Louis is not known for his mid-game adjustments, he did opt to pull Dobes with roughly five minutes left in the period, in an aggressive bid to put pressure on the Blues.

Unfortunately, it was all for naught, as the Blues desperately held onto their lead to close out the game.

The Montreal Canadiens are back in action on Tuesday, facing the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Bell Centre. The puck drop is scheduled for 7 pm ET.

All Montreal Canadiens statistics are 5v5 unless otherwise noted, via Natural Stat Trick.

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By Marc Dumont
Marc has been covering the Habs for over a decade. He previously worked for Journal Metro, The Athletic, The ... More about Marc Dumont

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