Juraj Slafkovsky's Highlights Shine in Canadiens' Defeat

The Montreal Canadiens were in Denver on Saturday afternoon, facing the high-flying Colorado Avalanche in the second leg of back-to-back games that included travel.

To be fair, the Avalanche were also playing the second leg of back-to-back games with travel, making it a relatively fair fight from a scheduling standpoint.

But that was the only fair fight of the night, as the Avalanche quickly established a multi-goal lead, and eventually emerged with a dominant 7-2 win.

Let’s dive into the highlights!

Wearing Nordiques Jerseys

A rant to start off today’s recap, If I may.

The Avalanche wore Québec Nordiques jerseys on Friday afternoon, as they celebrate their 30th season in Denver. The official story is that the Avalanche were trying to honour the Nordiques.

But let’s be honest, that’s complete malarkey.

I understand why the league is thirsty to collect as many nostalgia pennies as possible, but the 30th anniversary of Québec’s move to Colorado is far from a happy event for Nordiques fans. It feels a little gross to step on their fading hopes that a team will eventually return to the city just to squeeze the final dollars out of the nostalgia tree.

And you can be sure the league will want to hold more preseason games in Québec going forward, because there is no end to the nostalgia-marketing shortcut that has taken hold of the modern sports landscape.

No one really cares about Nordiques fans or the city, beyond how much money they can generate with jersey sales and preseason games.

It feels like we’ve definitely hit the point of diminishing returns when it comes to the overused nostalgia marketing.

That being said, the Nordiques threads are indeed some of the nicest ever made, but they belong in Québec.

Facing A Behemoth

We all know that the Avalanche are an excellent team.

To be even more accurate, they’re clearly the best team in the NHL, while the Canadiens are a fair distance away from being considered legitimate Stanley Cup contenders.

We use the David and Goliath story to inspire underdogs, and the message behind the story is always heartwarming, but the reality is that the side representing Goliath tends to win most match ups, and by a wide margin, too.

That was certainly the case on Saturday afternoon.

Montreal started strong, but quickly fell apart, falling victim to the Avalanche’s superior offence, defence, goaltending, and everything in between.

The mismatch was painfully obvious, to the point that even Nick Suzuki was caught off-guard before the Avalanche scored their fourth goal of the game.

Of course, he was far from the only one who struggled, but it goes to show that even the best player in the Canadiens lineup can’t afford to take a few seconds off versus a powerhouse team like the Avalanche.

Silver Lining

One of the most interesting developments since head coach Martin St-Louis changed the top six has been the emergence of Juraj Slafkovsky as a player who is capable of driving the offence.

He completed his second highlight-reel assist in as many games, setting up Ivan Demidov for his sixth goal of the season.

I maintain that the results were much more encouraging before St-Louis tinkered with the top-six, but the decision to break up one of the most dominant lines in hockey has led to interesting opportunities for Slafkovsky.

Saturday’s game also saw Lane Hutson score one of the cleanest goals from the point that he’s had in his young NHL career, a testament to the work he put in this summer to improve the power behind his slap shots.

Unforced Errors

The Avalanche don’t need any help to score, but the Canadiens still provided a fair amount of aid to the best team in the NHL.

For example, Brendan Gallagher completely forgot how line changes are supposed to work, which led to the sixth Avalanche goal.

On the flip side, it goes to show the communication stands to be improved, as the coaches should have mentioned the issue. The same can be said about the play that closed out the second period. No one told Ivan Demidov that time was running out, another good sign that Montreal’s communication is an issue at this moment.

The Montreal Canadiens are back in action on Tuesday, facing the Ottawa Senators. 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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