Dom Ducharme’s return boosts Montreal’s chances for comeback
Updated Friday, July 2, 2021
The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League, in their parallel universes, are arriving at, literally, the Final stage of a season that’s never been so grueling. Because of pandemic interference combined with billionaire greed, the basketball players and hockey players were deprived of their usual training regimens. They were rushed into a compressed schedule that brought more stress than human bodies could sustain.
So we get a basketball postseason that’s missing, for the most part, LeBron James, James Harden, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, Donovan Mitchell and – latest to fall — Giannis Antetokounmpo and Trae Young.
Meanwhile, Canada, though far ahead of its southern neighbor in managing health issues, is not proud of the fact that the Montreal Canadiens entered the Stanley Cup Final with coach Dom Ducharme in self-quarantine. He was a step slow in the vaccination process. He’s only an interim coach to begin with, stepping in when Claude Julien was fired in February.
Coaching has been an issue in this final series. Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper took full advantage of last line change for the home team.
In Phillip Danault, Montreal has the most tenacious defensive forward in the sport, and Cooper brilliantly strategized to keep him away from his top line – Brayden Point centering Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat. With Danault diverted, Kucherov scored twice against a team that hadn’t been in a Stanley Cup final since 1993, and it showed. The reigning Stanley Cup champions thumped the jittery Canadiens 5-1.
Luke Richardson, filling in for Ducharme and consulting with him, made adjustments after the opening debacle. He shifted Danault around as if he were a free safety in football. Danault seemed to be everywhere in Game 2. He created havoc and attracted it and made sure the zebras knew about it.
A potential turning point in this series came when Ryan McDonough slashed Danault’s nose with a very high stick late in the first period. Tampa absorbed the 4-minute penalty with each team already a man short from concurrent penalties.
Lots of open ice in a 4-on-3, but the Canadiens did not take advantage of the extended advantage. Richardson is suspect here, not finding much ice share for his fastest skater, 20-year old rookie sniper Cole Caufield, recently a Wisconsin Badger.
So Tampa scored first in Game 2. At 6:40 in the second period, Anthony Cirelli blasted from the right point, just inside the blue line. Vaunted goaltender Carey Price couldn’t track the puck through a screen of moving bodies.
The Canadiens, despite a 17-8 shooting advantage, trailed 1-0 but got the well-deserved evener on a power play goal by Nick Suzuki, 21-year-old linemate of Caufield. Suzuki’s semi-softie from the left point should not have been difficult for Vezina finalist Andrei Vasilevskiy. But he whiffed on this one – his only mistake of the night en route to a 3-1 victory and a 2-0 series lead for the Lightning.
Montreal was the faster-skating and more forceful team for most of Game 2. The Lightning missed their injured two-way forward Alex Killorn, key tool in their power play and steady hand against forechecking pressure of the sort Montreal delivered Wednesday. Meanwhile the Canadiens were bolstered by Joel Armia’s return from Covid reserve. Armia is a rangy, 6-4, 210-pound wing who’s a master of the penalty kill.
But while dominating on ice, the Canadiens got short-changed on the scoreboard, robbed several times by Vasilevskiy. They were outshooting Tampa 29-12 when they fell behind 2-1. With 5 seconds left in the second period, Barclay Goodrow outfought Ben Chiarot for the puck, burst down the right side and passed crisply to Blake Coleman at the goalmouth. Coleman, native of the almost ice-free Plano, Texas, pushed a diving one-armed shot past Price with not a second to spare.
“You don’t want to be diving,” Coleman said, “but with time running out, that’s all we had.”
Montreal’s front line of Suzuki, Caufield and Tyler Toffoli was a match for Point-Kucherov-Palat. But in the third period, defenseman Joel Edmundson tried a behind-the-nets drop-pass that Palat intercepted and stuffed past Price for 3-1, game over.
As the Canadiens see it, they took 43 shots at Vasilevskiy, and with any but the worst of luck would be tied entering Friday night’s game that’s carried by NBC at 7 p.m. Central. Suzuki on Wednesday night had 9 shots on net and seems justified in saying, “We have a good opportunity to bring a 2-2 series back here.”
Going home should be very good for the Canadiens. Ducharme returns to his post behind the bench. He got the better of Sheldon Keefe, Paul Maurice and Peter DeBoer in this postseason, and his players trust him to match tactics with the quick-thinking Cooper. For the next two games Ducharme gets last line change, which probably means Danault shadows Brayden Point or Kucherov throughout.
How much energy will the Canadiens draw from their fans? Tampa raised the Amalie Center capacity to 17,116 for Game 2. With Covid apparently on the run, Canadiens management pressed their local politicians to let more than 3,500 attend Centre Bell for Game 3. But the request was denied. Health over hockey had to be a tough call in that city.
The Lightning deserve to be favored because of their experience and reliability. And so far, Vasilevskiy has outplayed Price, where the battle was expected to be even. The Lightning are less likely to cough up the puck at a key moment. But these are deeply talented, well matched teams who skate fast, grind hard and are healthy enough to provide hockey of a caliber rarely seen. So much unlike the NBA, almost all the stars are playing.
