BURSTMONTREAL — We’ll get to what the Montreal Canadiens took from this 6-1 win over the Buffalo Sabres in a minute because what Patrik Laine took from it is more important right now.
He fired the kill shots — three of them — at this wounded animal. He received a shower of affection and hats from fans at the Bell Centre, who chanted his name following his first-ever hat trick in a Canadiens uniform. And he left the game feeling the reinvigoration of his love for hockey pulsing through his heart.
Consider what that experience could do for Laine, and for the Canadiens.
They traded for him in August knowing that his patented shot would guarantee him a certain level of success, even in the aftermath of a clavicle injury and some time spent in the NHL/NHLPA Players’ Assistance Program. They had to believe that talent would ensure a respectable level of productivity, and they had to feel that anything on top of that would be gravy.
But first Laine needed to rediscover his passion for the game.
It all but died by the end of his four-year tenure with the Columbus Blue Jackets, but its full-force revival can be the driving force of his continued development.
Martin St. Louis, the late-blooming, Hall-of-Fame-player-turned-coach, knows from experience how far love and passion can take a player.
“It starts there,” he said after Tuesday’s game. “When the players have that love, that passion, they’re going to work a lot harder at it, they’re going to commit to everything that doesn’t guarantee success but helps to go get it. To me, it starts there.”
For Laine, it’s a rebirth at 26, with six goals through seven games reinforcing the confidence that was no doubt rocked by last year’s experience and the knee injury suffered less than two games into his pre-season.
Again, it’s big for the Finn, and big for the Canadiens.
“When you have players with that kind of talent and you get them loving the game and being passionate about it,” said St. Louis, “it’s rare that you don’t reap the benefits of it.”
The likely production of such a prolific scorer, who reached as high as 44 goals over one season in Winnipeg and still scored 64 times in 174 games with the Blue Jackets, could only mean so much to the Canadiens. It means a lot — don’t get us wrong — but not everything to a team trying to build a future perennial contender.
Laine’s belief he’s more than just a goal scorer matters. His commitment to proving that matters most.
“It’s always you’re trying to be the best player you can be, and I’ve never seen myself as just a goal scorer. That’s kind of what the media has made me,” Laine said. “I think I’m a really good passer, and I can defend and do all that stuff. It’s just hard sometimes; the other team gets paid too, it’s not like we’re just skating out there by ourselves. They have good players, who are going to make plays.
“But yeah, I’m just committed to just being better in all the areas.”
That’s why Laine wasn’t entirely satisfied with just ripping three shots into the net on the power play, saying he would like to begin contributing at five-on-five, where he’s still searching for his first goal.
Then he said: “But I’ll take it and run away with it.”
The Canadiens aren’t giving back this win, either, even if it came over a Sabres team that somehow might’ve played worse on this night than it did over any of the 10 previous games it lost in a row.
The Canadiens smelled blood and attacked immediately, scoring the game’s first two goals and piling up a 9-0 advantage on the shot clock before the Sabres registered their first shot on net 10 minutes in.
Coming off an uncharacteristically poor performance on the power play in a 4-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets Saturday, the Canadiens aimed to correct themselves and did so with Laine’s help.
They also bounced back on the penalty kill, knocking out five Sabres chances —including a five-on-three — after allowing two goals to the Jets and getting scored on down a man for a fourth consecutive game.
On the second-to-last penalty kill Tuesday, Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki stepped in front of a one-timer and blocked it, reinforcing that there was value to take from this win. Even against this opponent.
“Winning hurts,” said St. Louis. “You gotta pay the price. You can’t just do those actions whenever you feel like it. We were talking about getting our PK back on track, and by not giving a PK goal in a 6-1 game it helps the confidence of the PK. Eating a bullet at that point in time, in a 6-1 game, I think it shows the commitment of the guys that they think beyond what’s good for them at that time. There’s nothing good for Suzy at that time to block a shot — it hurts — but what it does for the group, that stuff is contagious.”
That’s the stuff the Canadiens are looking for from everybody, every game.
For Suzuki, it’s the stuff that helps bring a group he’s leading, a group desperate for progress, one step further along in its process.
He set up two of Laine’s goals to bring his point total up to 32 in 31 games, but that block was just as important as any goal or assist he’s notched this season.
“I can’t ask guys to do stuff that I’m not willing to do,” Suzuki said.
We can’t think of a more foundational leadership quality than that, reinforcing why he was named captain and why an eight-year contract was awarded to him in October of 2021.
Suzuki is a big piece of both the Canadiens’ present and future.
Juraj Slafkovsky, who scored against the Sabres and played one of his better games of the season, offered a reminder of why he was chosen first overall in 2022 and was also committed to for eight years.
Long-term commitments to Cole Caufield and Kaiden Guhle have also been made, Lane Hutson is unquestionably playing his way down that path, and Arber Xhekaj is also looking like a keeper.
Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook can show they’re in that mix, too, as the season goes along.
And if Laine marries the exceptional skill he has always possessed with a level of commitment that he may not have ever had (even during his first two highly successful seasons), the Canadiens will get to where they want to go faster.
There are no guarantees he will do it, but the odds will improve as his love for the game grows.
“Just gotta keep working at it every day,” Laine said. “Hockey’s fun, fun to play and fun to practise and trying to get better, and I think I’m just sticking with that every day, trying to get better. And obviously there’s a lot of room to improve, especially after that long break, and trying to just kind of just get back to where I used to be and it doesn’t come by hoping or anything else. Just have to work, work, work and just do that.”
