For the second time this season – both of which have come in the month of December – the Montreal Canadiens have won three games in a row. After taking down two strong teams in the East coming out of the Christmas break, the Habs travelled to Nevada to face the Vegas Golden Knights, beating a top-two team in the Western Conference 3-2, and looking very good in the process.
As encouraging as three wins in a row are, the fact they did it against top teams is even more impressive. And in Vegas, their top line was key to making it happen.
This play had everything you want from the top line. Juraj Slafkovsky is using his size along the wall, Cole Caufield recognizes an opportunity to head for soft ice, and Nick Suzuki locates him with a no-look pass that could only end in a high-danger scoring chance, which he cashes. This is the kind of goal you would draw up simply from knowing the respective players’ strengths, and they executed it to perfection.
Since starting this road trip, we’ve seen some pretty tough matchups for the Suzuki line. Without the benefit of last change, Martin St-Louis can’t control their matchups as much, and opposing teams know that trio to be the biggest threat. They don’t get any easy shifts as a result, and that has led to a slight downturn in their production. But tough road matchups can only hold them down for so long, and the team is getting secondary scoring to fill in the gaps right now.
Against Vegas, they spent the majority of their minutes against Jack Eichel’s line, who they dominated. By the end of the night, they held a nearly 90% share of expected goals at even-strength, and while that only translated to one actual goal, it proved that they can take on one of the best lines in the league and come out ahead. If the aforementioned secondary scoring keeps coming, it’s only going to get harder to hold them down with matchups, because it isn’t even all that easy right now.
This team is starting to look like they’ve figured some things out. If their top line can look this good against one of the best teams in the league, there is hope that they can be “in the mix” sooner than later.
Click the play button below to listen to your full Bottom Six Minutes, also available wherever you usually get your podcasts. Wishing you all a very happy New Year, and we’ll be back for the first game of 2025 this Friday when the Habs will be in Illinois to take on the Chicago Blackhawks.
