Canadiens’ determination, growth offsetting damage to lottery odds

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NASHVILLE — Nick Suzuki jumped over the blue line and made his way into position to make the decisive play in a game he’d been chasing since the puck dropped.

He was on the ice for all three Nashville Predators goals before coming up with the one the Montreal Canadiens needed to win overtime Tuesday. He uncharacteristically lost his man on all three of those plays but kept his chin up and buried the most important shot at the most important time, and it was emblematic of the determination he and his team showed — and not just in this hockey game.

The Canadiens started this trip going toe-to-toe with the NHL-best Florida Panthers, ultimately falling 4-3 in a shootout. They traded blows with the desperate and talented Tampa Bay Lightning and fell a hair short of beating them in what ended up being another 4-3 shootout loss. And they brought the same effort to this brawl with a Nashville team that had won eight consecutive games, leading this time to a 4-3 win off their captain’s stick.

The Canadiens just don’t quit. It doesn’t matter where they are in a game, or in the standings, they’ve developed a resiliency that will serve them well, and that’s just one thing that’s been gained this season.

It’s a thing that shouldn’t be discounted in weighing what’s best for this team at this moment.

Sure, maybe games like these take them further away from potentially landing a top-three pick in this year’s draft, but they also get them closer to being out of the draft-lottery conversation a year from now.

You may not feel it, but the Canadiens do.

Suzuki, who was standing at his stall with a gash in his lip after the game, feels the team has taken a vital step towards where it wants to go.

“It’s really exciting to see,” he said. “We don’t quit … That’s what we need moving forward.”

Win or lose, the effort is there, and the Canadiens have lost enough to appease the tank enthusiasts.

But it’s just as important they come out sometimes winning games like these, as it reinforces to them that the brand they’ve established, and consistently applied of late, can give them results they deserve.

They deserved better through a recent five-game losing streak. They were honest in their assessment of the win that broke that — their last February game at the Bell Centre, which was a stinker against an Arizona Coyotes team that had lost 12 straight — and they corrected themselves immediately in Florida.

And yes, the Canadiens got a miraculous bounce on Tuesday, when David Savard’s shot off the glass late in the second period found Juuse Saros’ empty net to tie things up 2-2. But they earned that bounce with Savard’s shot being the last in an 11-2 run they went on to close that frame.

In the third, against a Predators team that had outscored its opponents 7-0 and clobbered them 84-40 in shot attempts over their last three games, the Canadiens stood their ground.

They were rewarded for that when Joshua Roy responded to Ryan O’Reilly’s goal by stripping Roman Josi of the puck and then shooting it through Luke Schenn and Saros to get the Canadiens to overtime.

And they were rewarded again when Suzuki ripped that shot off the post and in to win it.

Brendan Gallagher, who got Montreal on the board six seconds before Savard’s Music City Miracle, spoke to why that mattered.

“I think individually you can see a lot of players’ games are being risen to the next level,” he said before acknowledging the growth of the group. “Even when you look at the start of the year, where we were and where we are now, you can just see improvement. I think there’s excitement within our team, and our coaching staff does a really good job of just keep us positive and understanding, but also teaching. They’ve brought us to a level where we’re feeling really good about our game. They understand how competitive this league is, too.

“We want to make those jumps. We don’t want to wait until next year to do it. We want to do what we can do now to improve as a group and make sure that when we come back, we’re hitting the ground running and trying to take that jump.”

The players taking ownership of that process has been evident to Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis.

“I think it’s the guys,” he said. “As a coach, you take care of the guys that take care of the team. Our group as a whole is taking care of that locker room. For us, we’re just trying to put ‘em in good spots, be organized, but it’s them.”

And what does that represent?

“Tons, tons of growth,” St. Louis said.

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Speaking this week with players like Savard and Jake Allen, who have had their names circulating through trade rumours all season, all they have talked about is experiencing that and wanting to continue being part of what’s being built with this team. Veteran Mike Matheson spoke on Tuesday morning about how the team’s even-keel mentality has stimulated progress that “will lead to better things,” and Gallagher and Suzuki echoed those sentiments after the game.

Even Roy, the rookie, was feeling them.

“It’s really incredible,” he said. “You can feel the chemistry of the team. They’ve been really incredible with me, welcoming me from the start, and the ambiance in the room is amazing and you can see it translate on the ice. Those are great teams we’re playing night after night, and we’re there each game, and I think tonight does some good — especially against a team that had won eight straight games.”

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