The Canadiens’ belief system in their brand of hockey is under attack from the Hurricanes

MONTREAL — Ever since Martin St. Louis took over as coach of the Montreal Canadiens a little more than four years ago, he has tried to ingrain certain principles into his young team.

That young team was losing a whole lot back then, but those principles were being established in the hopes they would pay off once the team was ready for an opportunity like the one it finds itself in right now.

The Canadiens are not in the Eastern Conference final by accident; they got here by beating the fifth-best team in the NHL in round one and the fourth-best in round two, only to reach a meeting with the second-best, the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes also operate according to a set of principles ingrained in them by their coach Rod Brind’Amour, but they have been doing it for much longer, and they are able to execute it almost flawlessly.

And one of the main beliefs the Hurricanes operate under is the same as one the Canadiens hope to.

St. Louis, from day one in Montreal, has always wanted his team to play on top of their opponents, to apply pressure on puck carriers from far from the Canadiens’ net to make it near impossible to enter their zone and produce offence.

No one does that better than the Hurricanes. Maybe one day the Canadiens will be at the top of the heap for playing that way, but they aren’t yet, and they are feeling it in this series they are trailing 2-1 after losing a second straight overtime game 3-2 on Monday, their first consecutive losses of these playoffs.

“This whole experience, it’s part of our learning,” St. Louis said. “There’s always learning in failure. We lost tonight. We’ll learn from it.

“That team over there’s a good team, very mature. I don’t know if we can match their maturity, but we’re going to have to elevate that.”

It is easy to get the sense that the Canadiens were one shot away from winning both Game 2 and Game 3 because they went to overtime. It is even easier to think that when your 101-point captain Nick Suzuki gets a clean breakaway 30 seconds into it and shoots two feet wide.

But it was clear St. Louis did not think that.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “We created those chances, but we need to create more; 12 shots is not enough.”

It is highly unlikely St. Louis will take solace in the fact the Canadiens were retroactively credited with a shot in overtime, giving them 13 in the game. It is still not enough. In the past two games, the Canadiens have registered 12 and 13 shots, two of the three games in NHL playoff history with the fewest shot totals in a game that required overtime.

In the day between Game 2 and 3, speaking at the team hotel in Raleigh, N.C., St. Louis outlined the mental challenge the Hurricanes present.

“I think the challenge against this team is you know they’re going to have more shots than you. The challenge is not to let that knock you out mentally,” St. Louis said Sunday morning. “It would have been great to generate more (in Game 2), but we didn’t give them a whole lot either. So you can’t look at the shots and let it knock you out mentally.”

After Game 3, however, it was impossible for St. Louis to deny that the shot disparity is not creating the conditions necessary to win. Because that shot disparity is not the actual problem, it is the fact the Canadiens have been unable to create the conditions to get more shots. And that is a multi-pronged issue that includes executing on every single puck tough despite being under intense pressure, on making decisions under that pressure, and on thinking in the future.

Because thinking in the future is another principle St. Louis has preached to this team for more than four years, something he has cultivated in the hopes of reaping the benefits on this stage.

Thinking in the future means knowing what you will do with the puck before you have it, it means knowing what the opposing team will do with the puck before they do it, and the Canadiens are doing neither of those things against this team because the Hurricanes have been able to think in the future far better than the Canadiens have.

St. Louis talked about misreading situations at the offensive blue line, trying to possess across the line when a well-placed chip into the zone would allow the Canadiens to forecheck and get the puck back. And part of that is due to just how difficult it is for the Canadiens just to get out of their zone with possession, and once they do that to navigate the neutral zone with possession just to put themselves in a position to have to even make a decision at the offensive blue line.

To do all that work only to have it result in a turnover at the offensive blue line can be deflating.

And that is happening constantly.

“Obviously we don’t want to pass up on shots, but there’s opportunity there for something better than a shot,” St. Louis said. “I feel like we don’t create enough of those decisions that you have to make. So we’ve got to work on that first.”

In other words, thinking in the future against this team is really difficult.

“Yeah it is, but there’s always the future. Always,” St. Louis said. “So for me, as much as your space is going to get closed out quicker, you better think about the future quicker. It’s always there, we’ve just got to do it quicker. And I feel at times we’re playing a little too slow, and sometimes we play at the right pace but we don’t execute.”

An added element is that the Hurricanes’ offensive principles, which — as opposed to the defensive principles that are very similar — are diametrically opposed to those of the Canadiens.

Carolina will put the puck on net from everywhere on the ice, no matter the likelihood it will go in, because the more you do it, the more you give yourself a chance to benefit from a bounce or a rebound, much like they did on the overtime winner when a relatively low-danger shot by Andrei Svechnikov got deflected in by Juraj Slafkovský battling Sebastian Aho at the net front.

That is the benefit of shot volume.

“I guess their willingness to throw some pucks on net (can be frustrating),” said Lane Hutson, who repeatedly took the blame for the loss because it was his turnover that led to the winning goal. “Sometimes they get a bounce, sometimes they don’t. But they’re good at it, they’re good at retrieving pucks. The volume can be tough.”

The Canadiens prefer to focus on shot quality. But the seemingly inevitable outcome of these past two games because of the volume might have the Canadiens re-thinking that principle, because the opposing principle appears to be working whereas theirs isn’t.

“They shoot from everywhere,” St. Louis said. “I would like it if we shot the puck more, for sure. But it’s not always about shooting from everywhere, it depends on what you believe in. But we need to have more volume.”

It depends on what you believe in.

If there is one thing this series is putting into doubt for the Canadiens, it is whether what they believe in can work against this opponent. The Hurricanes don’t allow teams to have time to make decisions, and the Canadiens create so much of their offence thinking one step ahead of the opposition with the puck. They simply haven’t had time to do that the past two games.

Does that mean they need to re-think how they view the game of hockey? No, because that would be admitting defeat and essentially playing into the hands of the Hurricanes, and believing in your own brand of hockey is a crucial part of playoff success.

The Canadiens will just need to apply their brand of hockey by thinking in the future much quicker than they’re accustomed to.

For a young team learning about what it takes to succeed on this stage, this is a valuable exercise, as St. Louis noted.

But for a team that is less concerned about learning and more concerned with winning on this stage, that learning will need to happen very quickly, and their belief in their brand of hockey will need to find a way to shine through against a team built to snuff that brand of hockey out.