MONTREAL — It was an ominous statement from Joe Veleno, though it wasn’t meant to be.
When the Montreal Canadiens forward said — just one day after Game 3 of this Eastern Conference Final — that the Carolina Hurricanes were applying so much pressure that it felt at times like they had six players on the ice, he was just trying to credit his opponents. There was no way of knowing to what extent he was also providing a window into his team’s psyche.
We didn’t pick up on it in the moment, either.
But the first 20 minutes of Game 4 revealed the damage done over the Canadiens’ first consecutive losses in these playoffs. They expected so much pressure that they buckled even when they weren’t under it, ultimately feeding the Hurricanes 10 scoring chances off turnovers and spotting them a 3-0 lead through the first period.
“Not an easy team to play catch-up hockey against,” said Martin St. Louis after his Canadiens lost 4-0 to go down 3-1 in the series, extending their inexplicably bad post-season record at the Bell Centre to 2-8.
He made changes in the second period that he probably should’ve opted for in the first, and they led to more scoring chances.
But those disappeared in a third period that saw the Canadiens fumble in every zone before finally notching their first shot with 2:53 to go.
Fans chanted “shoot the puck” four minutes prior to that, with the Canadiens sitting on 15 after notching just 25 over their last two games combined.
But the home team couldn’t oblige without first connecting as many as two passes in a row, and they had a hard time doing that from start to finish.
“I feel like we had players with the most space with the puck and we don’t skate enough, we pass it to a player with no space,” said St. Louis. “So, you kind of play into their pressure, and it’s a little bit of that.
“It’s just recognizing that, (with) the way they play, the guy with the most ice in space should take the ice, and we’re not playing fast enough when we have the puck with our feet. We’re not playing fast enough off the puck so we can kind of bypass the pressure, and they’ve got really, really good sticks.”
The Hurricanes have wielded them expertly to inflict a physical and mental toll the Canadiens might not be able to overcome.
The collateral damage of two seven-game series has also unquestionably bubbled to the surface for them. Especially against a Hurricanes team that swept the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers through the first two rounds to earn an 11-day break — most of which was enjoyed while the Canadiens were still emptying the tank against the Buffalo Sabres.
“For sure (the rest) helps their style of game,” said St. Louis, and that resonated, if only because their style of game — 200-foot, man-on-man, high-pressure hockey — has been seen as impossible to sustain over an entire regular season plus playoffs.
Hence the Hurricanes losing 12 of 13 conference final games under coach Rod Brind’Amour prior to this year.
But the Hurricanes never had an 11-day break prior to this year, nor a lead in a conference final in their current era of success, and there’s almost surely a direct correlation between those facts when you consider how convincingly the Hurricanes have beaten the Canadiens since losing 6-2 in Game 1.
In the process, they haven’t just exhausted an already-tired team; they’ve done the type of psychological damage that most will see as impossible to overcome.
So, how do the Canadiens repair it on time to prove most people wrong and at least bring this series back to Bell Centre for a chance to force Game 7?
“You’ve gotta be mentally strong. You’ve got to believe,” said St. Louis. “You’ve got to believe that you can actually do it. To me, I don’t doubt that I believe that we can do it…”
Alex Newhook said, “They make it hard on you to make plays and they try to collapse your space, but we have the skill and we have the team to be able to make plays through that,” making it clear he also still believes.
So does Jakub Dobes, who made 39 saves on his 25th birthday and said, “It’s over, tomorrow is a new day, and we’ll get on a plane, prepare and show up with our best hockey for Game 5.”
Captain Nick Suzuki talked about how he and five of his Canadiens teammates toppled the Toronto Maple Leafs from down 3-1 in the first round of the 2021 playoffs before eventually making it to the Stanley Cup Final.
“You have to be super desperate,” he said. “(The Hurricanes have) obviously struggled in the conference final up to this point (in the past), and I think if we go over there and do a good job and bring our game, we can try to put some more doubt in their head.”
The Canadiens must clear their own minds first.
They were clouded more than we thought in the lead-up to Game 4, and that showed as soon as the puck dropped.
The Canadiens immediately started giving it away and didn’t stop.
“I think we have to do a better job of recognizing when we do have a little bit of space,” said Mike Matheson, “using our feet to keep that space available so we can execute afterwards.”
That would lay the foundation for the Canadiens to rebuild their psyche, which was clearly damaged by the middle games of this series.