A nervous-looking Montreal Canadiens took to the ice for Game 1 of their playoff series against the Washington Capitals on Monday night. The first period was scary looking, but they settled in as the game went on, and ended up executing a thrilling third-period comeback to force overtime. Unfortunately that was as far as they’d go, as a suspect icing call led to Alexander Ovechkin ending the game in a 3-2 victory for the favourites.
It was a bit of a one-line show for the Habs, with Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Cole Caufield leading the way in their comeback.
NICK SUZUKI TIES THE GAME pic.twitter.com/RAWyePkC3z
— Matt Drake (@DrakeMT) April 22, 2025
It isn’t surprising whatsoever to see them drive the bus. Frankly, it isn’t even necessarily problematic. They are the best line on the team, and they should be the toughest for the opposition to deal with. But this team is at its best when they can get some secondary scoring. If there was anything problematic about last night, it wasn’t that the top dogs led the way, it was that there didn’t seem like much hope of that secondary scoring ever materializing.
The line of Emil Heineman, Jake Evans, and Joel Armia was perfectly fine. That said, it isn’t a line you can rely on for any sort of sustained offensive output. Their job was to go out there and make sure Washington couldn’t score while they were. They did that, but the challenge for Martin St-Louis is how to get more out of the other six forwards on his roster.
Both the Christian Dvorak and Alex Newhook lines were caved in at five-on-five, between them posting a grand total of two scoring chances for, and 13 against. The Newhook line ended up being scored on twice, so they in particular had a disastrous evening. It is undoubtedly too early to be talking about breaking those lines up, but they are the two units that St-Louis needs to focus on if he wants a chance to win this series. His team proved last night that they’re not to be taken lightly, and if he can get those lines up to par, look out.
This may prove difficult without the benefit of last change in Game 2, but he has to get them doing a little bit more before the series shifts to the Bell Centre.
There is still plenty of hockey left in this series. If the top line is going to play like that, they’ll just need a bit of help from the supporting cast to drag it to six or seven games, and just maybe win the thing.
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