𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

MONTREAL — Adversity in the form of injuries hit the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday, and while coach Martin St. Louis refused to blame those injuries for his team’s 4-3 loss to the New York Rangers, it did provide a window into the process of building trust.

The Canadiens lost the game because they got sloppy; they stopped doing the things that earned them a four-game winning streak, the things that appeared to show signs of maturity from a young group. The Canadiens failed to properly manage a game they led 2-0 early and allowed to slip away because the Rangers did the things the Canadiens had done so well through their first five games by putting pucks behind their defence, being patient and forechecking hard to disrupt Montreal’s ability to break pucks out.

With the announcement Saturday morning that defenceman Kaiden Guhle would miss 4-6 weeks with a lower-body injury and Kirby Dach and Patrik Laine would miss the game with their own lower-body injuries, it meant both Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble would be dressed on the blue line, Joe Veleno would make his Canadiens debut and Owen Beck would be called up from the Laval Rocket.

“It’s an opportunity,” St. Louis said before the game, “and it’s going to give us a sign of our depth.”

To be clear, none of those players was responsible for the Canadiens losing the game, just as St. Louis said afterward.

But St. Louis also said the game changed when Josh Anderson was called for a needless holding penalty in the neutral zone, opening a window for Mika Zibanejad to score with one of his patented one-timer lasers from close to the boards, a shot that is basically impossible to defend.

The closest player to Zibanejad on that shot was Jake Evans, and there is no world in which he should have been closer to Zibanejad because he was in a spot that is not very dangerous for normal shooters to be placed.

What was most interesting, however, was that with Evans’ normal penalty-killing partner, Anderson, unavailable, he was told to stay out there as long as he could. When Zibanejad scored, Evans had been on the ice for all 92 seconds of the penalty kill with a rotation of Alex Newhook and Oliver Kapanen next to him.

“That was the plan, or most of it, until I got tired,” Evans said. “And I wasn’t. It was just a crazy shot from the boards.”

Mika right on target. 🎯 pic.twitter.com/7U1ZgeeYkP

— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) October 18, 2025

The interesting part of that is the plan. You lose one regular penalty killer because he is in the box, and the response is to keep one of the regulars out there as long as he can go. The same thing happened with 1:28 left in the second period when Alexandre Carrier was also called for holding. Mike Matheson and Noah Dobson killed off the entire penalty, helped by the break for the second intermission, but J.T. Miller scored two seconds after the penalty expired to open the third period, tying the game and setting off a sequence of three Rangers goals in a span of just over five minutes.

“I feel I did it last year, I would sometimes spend the whole two minutes out there,” Matheson said. “I feel pretty comfortable doing that.”

Again, this was not a sign of the quality of the Canadiens’ depth, but rather a sign of how that depth would be used and won’t be used. Neither Xhekaj nor Struble spent one second on the ice down a man; both Veleno and Beck played fewer than 10 minutes, which, to be fair, had more to do with the Canadiens chasing the game in the third than anything else.

However, Veleno and Beck were placed on a line with Zack Bolduc — who usually plays with Dach and Brendan Gallagher — because St. Louis wanted Gallagher to play with Evans and Anderson, and he wanted that for one reason.

Trust.

“I feel it helps me with matchups, having those three guys,” St. Louis said before the game. “I feel like last year, (Christian Dvorak) played with Gally and Andy, and (Joel Armia) played with (Emil) Heineman and Jakey. Those guys were kind of momentum lines and I could use them against any matchups; they were very responsible. And I feel having these three guys together, I think it gives me that. That’s what I’m hoping for.”

It’s what St. Louis got from that line, for the most part. But it is a telling sign on a young team that trust is valuable, and trust comes with time.

Both Xhekaj and Struble know their respective paths to a consistent spot in the lineup come with showing an ability to be trusted on the penalty kill, and that trust simply isn’t there.

“I think maybe when one of the PKers goes down, then I have to step up and play,” Xhekaj said Tuesday morning. “I think it’s just when I get the opportunity, I’ve got to be good on it. You never know what happens in the lineup.”

That evening, in the home opener against the Seattle Kraken, Xhekaj played 33 seconds on the penalty kill. At the end of those 33 seconds, the Kraken scored, through no obvious fault of Xhekaj. Thursday night, Xhekaj didn’t play. And Saturday night, he didn’t play on the penalty kill at all, despite the fact “one of the PKers” went down.

On the power play, with the absences of Laine and Dach depriving the second unit of two members, Nick Suzuki played on both units instead of giving someone else an opportunity, and it paid off when Suzuki scored his first goal of the season playing on the second unit off a brilliant pass from Ivan Demidov.

There was also a situation late in the game with the Canadiens looking to tie the score, the teams playing at five-on-four because goaltender Sam Montembeault — who had a second straight difficult start — was on the bench and Demidov was also on the bench. St. Louis opted to send his first power-play unit on the ice instead, despite the fact Demidov had one of his more dynamic nights of the season so far. Demidov got out there for the last 50 seconds of the game, but he spent the prime opportunity to tie the game on the bench.

The game was a test of the Canadiens’ depth, yes. And by and large, the depth passed the test. Veleno had a strong game, as did Beck, Xhekaj and Struble.

But it was also a test of trust, and it being so early in the season, this game made it clear that trust remains elusive for some players who haven’t yet earned it.

So while the Canadiens’ depth of talent is better than it’s been in years, the depth of trust appears to be still lagging.