Montreal Canadiens winger Jonathan Drouin put the blame for the team's struggles squarely on the players after the team's dismal season continued Monday with a 5-2 loss to the 31st-place Arizona Coyotes.

With the win, the Coyotes increased the gap to three points ahead of the Canadiens for last in the NHL standings with both teams having played 37 games.

“(Sometimes) we show up for a couple of periods or a couple of shifts and sometimes we don’t,” Drouin said. “And that’s on the players – not the coaches, not the trainers – it’s only the players that have to show up and start playing.”

The Canadiens, who have recorded just one point in 2022 and had only one win in the month of December, saw their current winless skid extended to six games with the loss.

This season has represented a significant fall from grace for the Canadiens, who reached the Stanley Cup Final last season before falling to the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

"We're not going to give up on the season," Drouin added. "There's stuff you can build even though you're [among] the last teams in the league. We have young players, we have stuff we want to build for the next year, so we can't give up."

The Canadiens will have little time dwell on Monday's loss as they return to the ice Tuesday to face the Dallas Stars in their seventh straight road game, with a total of 10 scheduled for this trip.