Sports

Canadiens provided with template to follow after being schooled by Kings

Published

10 months ago

November 26, 2023

LOS ANGELES — With just under 14 minutes to play in a game the Canadiens were losing 3-0, Gustav Lindstrom and Kaiden Guhle exchanged six consecutive passes behind their own goal line, each of them searching for a breakout option that never presented itself to them.

That’s when they coughed up the puck to the Kings for yet another quality scoring chance against.

It was the Kings’ fourth in a two-minute span, which is about what they averaged throughout the third period as they swarmed the Canadiens and stung them over and over again.

When the puck got out of Montreal’s zone, back it came, usually on an odd-man rush like the one Trevor Moore scored on to make it 4-0 Kings with 6:32 remaining.

Kings’ Moore doubles-up with two similar goals that eke just past Canadiens’ Allen

That, of course, was after the Kings had already broken the Canadiens’ will with the cat-and-mouse style that comes from the one-three-one neutral-zone scheme they deploy when leading. They first pressed the Canadiens — and not just up against the glass — with an aggressive forecheck to get a lead, and then they got that lead, sat back and, as Mike Matheson put it afterwards, forced them to “play in a way that we don’t like to.”

Every teammate of Matheson’s we spoke to praised the 13-3-3 Kings, with goaltender Jake Allen referring to them as the most unified team in the NHL and Brendan Gallagher calling them “really hard to play against.”

But the Kings also served up a template for the Canadiens to follow.

When we asked coach Martin St. Louis what they should take from this game, he decided to answer that there was something they should take from the Kings.

“I think, if anything, that offensive pace they play with, in terms of getting pucks back in our d-zone when they lose the puck, they’re hunting to get it back and there’s not much room,” St. Louis said.

He knows the Canadiens understand that’s the goal. He says all the time they should be committed to defending as soon as they lose the puck, that defence doesn’t begin in their own zone.

Kings’ Grundstrom takes aim and unloads blistering slapshot to open scoring vs. Canadiens

But St. Louis and the Canadiens also know they don’t have the pieces the Kings do — three world-class centres in Anze Kopitar, Phillip Danault and Pierre-Luc Dubois with size and strength on the wings and on defence — nor the experience to execute it as regularly.

Not that they won’t strive to.

“You can’t generate that without everybody working hard off the puck and everybody having some pace to their game,” St. Louis said. “That’s what we’re chasing. That’s what we want to look like in getting pucks back. When we do that, we’re hard to play against. We’ve just got to find more consistency in playing with that pace when we lose pucks.”

It’ll take time, even if the Canadiens can improve on it over the final 61 games of the season.

A healthy Kirby Dach will help next go around. Other additions made over the off-season will lead to more growth.

In the meantime, it was good for the Canadiens to see that style of play work so well from up close. Even if it was painful and frustrating for them to be the victim of it.

“We didn’t play a bad game,” St. Louis said. “They’re a team that forces you to really earn all your chances. They bring so much pace defensively. We were able to break that a bit in the second. It would’ve been fun to score then. We were there, but once they score the third, that changes everything.”

That’s when the Canadiens began chasing — and leaking — chances.

They’ll face the Kings again Dec. 7. They’ll face other teams who play similarly. They’ll have to borrow from L.A.’s style, but also make the adjustments that would’ve enabled them to break it a little.

“I think you have to bring speed and be very connected and be coming together,” said Matheson, who like Guhle and Lindstrom late in the game, spent a lot of his night looking for breakout options that weren’t available to him.

“I thought we did a good job of bringing speed and being connected a few times,” Matheson said, “and at other times one guy might have gone a little early, one guy might have come a little late off the bench or we were maybe getting antsy and impatient. When a team does that as well as they do in the neutral zone, you have to be very, very connected.”

If you’re not, you end up with just one shot on net in a period, like the Canadiens did in the first.

If you can’t capitalize on the chances you create in the second period and end up chasing a two-goal lead in the third, a team like the Kings will feast on the mistakes you become more prone to making.

There isn’t much else you can do from there, except learn from it and move on.

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Sports

Canada’s Marina Stakusic falls in Guadalajara Open quarterfinals

Published

5 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.

The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.

Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.

In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.

The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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Kirk’s walk-off single in 11th inning lifts Blue Jays past Cardinals 4-3

Published

5 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.

With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.

Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.

Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.

Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.

He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.

The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.

Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.

He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.

George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.

Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.

In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.

St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.

ON DECK

Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.

The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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Stampeders return to Maier at QB eyeing chance to get on track against Alouettes

Published

5 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.

It won’t be an easy assignment.

Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.

“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”

Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.

“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”

Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.

After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.

“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”

Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.

“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.

A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.

“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”

But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.

“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”

Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”

“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.

Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.

“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”

While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.

“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”

The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.

“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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