Canadiens Curiously Go with Seven Defensemen in Guhle’s Return

To be fair, you can understand his thought process. An incredibly well-rounded Guhle on defense is much more valuable than a relatively inexperienced Roy on offense. Against a team like the Hurricanes, who also put up the second-most shots in the league per game (31.7), you need all the help on defense you can get. It’s almost a miracle the Canadiens kept them at a mere 25 in the game… although that might have to do more with the Hurricanes, a significantly better team, being willing to play whatever game the Habs drew up (and still come away with a relatively one-sided win that, combined with the Columbus Blue Jackets picking up two points, dropped the visitors out of a playoff spot).

Now losers of their last five games (three straight in regulation), the Canadiens only have themselves as a whole to blame at this point. While they can still salvage this wild-card run they’ve been on since their return from the 4 Nations Face-Off, they definitely need to act quickly, because time is running out for them, specifically St. Louis, to figure things out.

St. Louis Front and Centre as Canadiens Coach

The first of those regulation defeats, coincidentally against the St. Louis Blues, was of the blowout variety, a 6-1 defeat in which the Canadiens had no chance. The second, against the Philadelphia Flyers, who had just fired head coach John Tortorella after going 1-10-1 heading in, was arguably more embarrassing, with St. Louis finding himself front and centre once again. His decision to challenge for goaltender interference on their fourth goal against backfired. The Flyers scored the eventual game-winning goal on the ensuing penalty, to make the score 5-2, to put it out of reach. The Flyers ended up winning it 6-4.

Now, give St. Louis the benefit of the doubt here, in that Flyers forward Bobby Brink did appear to interfere with Canadiens goalie Jakub Dobes on the play, Tyson Foerster scoring the goal. No one knows how those video reviews will go, and, if you’re scored against to go two goals down with 10 minutes left in the third, the game kind of seems out of reach. So, it makes sense to first take a timeout to review the footage yourself to be sure, as St. Louis did, and then make the challenge when by all appearances there was actual physical contact.

However, the fact the Canadiens lost to a team in a veritable free fall down the standings, one that was willfully playing the game shorthanded by benching one of their defensemen, Cam York, for the entire contest for disciplinary reasons looks bad. And here the Canadiens were against the Hurricanes with an extra one and still unable to make it work.

That really looks bad.

And it’s not like St. Louis had to go that route. He could have gone with a traditional six-defenseman lineup and just made the decision to scratch someone like Xhekaj, who ended up playing just 3:52 in the game, anyway. It obviously would have been a hard decision to scratch him, but, faced with that hard decision, he arguably made the worst one possible. He ended up with makeshift pairs and a Frankenstein-esque chemistry experiment that probably should have been worked through way in advance of the Canadiens facing a tough opponent in a building they’ve had little success in, on their current losing streak.

Cut Canadiens Some Slack

Obviously, St. Louis is far from perfect. He’s no stranger to questionable deployment decisions. The one he has made to consistently ride a sub.-900 goalie in Sam Montembeault, who, prior to 2024-25, had never played more than 41 games in any one professional season, is right up there. However, in so doing, it becomes clear how badly St. Louis wants to win. That’s the common ground on which he and the incredibly passionate Canadiens fanbase find themselves.

Canadiens fans by and large want him and the Habs to succeed, which is why the unforced errors are so hard to accept on their part. However, St. Louis is also in the midst of only his third complete season behind the bench. There will be unforced errors on his part, especially in a profession when a Jack Adams Award-winning coach can get called for sending too many men out on the ice late in a Game 7 while nursing a one-goal lead. Looking at it from that perspective, his mistakes should be a little easier to forgive due to the Habs being where they are in the wild-card race, arguably further along in their rebuild than most anticipated at this stage.

On paper, the Canadiens aren’t a great team. So, it’s incredibly impressive for St. Louis to have gotten what he has out of them this season. And it’s not over yet, to be clear. They can still see this thing through. Granted, they need to be better, maybe better than they’re capable of being, having had their foot on the gas for a month now. However, St. Louis for sure can be, even if only by virtue of him being still in the process of learning the ropes. With that in mind, it’s imperative to give him some slack… Laine too while everyone’s at it.