The Montreal Canadiens were unable to break through offensively for the third consecutive game Wednesday night as they fell 4-0 to the Carolina Hurricanes, putting them into a 3-1 series hole in the Eastern Conference final.
The Habs were thoroughly outplayed in Game 4 as Carolina dominated with 43 shots on goal compared to just 18 from Montreal. That followed a wider trend from the series where the Hurricanes have now outshot the Habs by a total of 136 to 65, which includes the series opener where Montreal scored six of their 10 total goals in the conference final.
As Game 4 ticked away in the third period, fans at the Bell Centre had a message for their team.
“Shoot the puck! Shoot the puck!” the crowd chanted with under eight minutes to go.
Head coach Martin St. Louis didn’t dispute their message.
“It’s not fun to hear that,” he said via Dan Rosen of NHL.com, “but they’re not wrong.”
Captain Nick Suzuki took a similar tune.
“They have the right to speak what they want,” Suzuki said. “I mean, we’d love to have more shots, so we’re kind of in the same boat as them.”
The Habs’ struggling offence was given an enormous task early on in Game 4. Sebastian Aho, Jordan Staal and Logan Stankoven all scored within nearly three minutes of each other in the opening period, quieting a boisterous crowd in Montreal and putting the Habs in a hole they weren’t able to dig out of.
The Hurricanes have been nothing short of remarkable during this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, having won 11 of their 12 games. The Hurricanes swept both the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers by conceding just 10 total goals against through the first two rounds. And outside of Montreal’s 6-2 win in Game 1 of the conference final, the Hurricanes haven’t allowed more than two goals in a game.
Still, there are adjustments Montreal can make to get their offence going, according to St. Louis.
“We’re not playing fast enough when we have the puck with our feet,” the head coach said. “We’re not playing fast enough off the puck so we can kind of bypass the pressure. And they’ve got really, really good sticks.”
Shot metrics and 3-1 series deficit aside, the Canadiens had opportunities to win both Games 2 and 3. Nikolaj Ehlers scored the winner in overtime to even the series and Andrei Svechnikov gave the Hurricanes a two games to one lead in Game 3. The tilted ice showed much more in Carolina’s dominant 4-0 Game 4 victory.
St. Louis said his team will need to be resilient to get back in the series.
“I mean, you’ve got to be mentally strong,” St. Louis said. “You’ve got to believe. You’ve got to believe that you can actually do it. To me, I don’t doubt that I believe we can do it. It wasn’t our best tonight, but we’ll put our best foot forward for Game 5. We’ll be ready to go. Hopefully we can execute better. And we’ve been better on the road.”
