Skip to main content

Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price and Max Pacioretty celebratePaul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

Hmm. So does this mean the Habs are an elite team after all?

Barely 48 hours after looking like anything but against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Montreal Canadiens took the St. Louis Blues to school, ate their lunch, and stuffed them into a locker.

It was, surely, their best performance of the season.

They dominated a Western Conference contender – which had only lost six road games in regulation against Eastern teams since 2012 – for long swaths of the game, won the puck possession battle against a top possession team, and did it with an all-veteran defensive alignment that featured a lefty playing on the right of the second pair (Sergei Gonchar) and a righty playing the left on the third pair (Tom Gilbert).

It's a simple formula, really.

If the Habs can get the kind of goaltending they did out of Carey Price in the third period – he thwarted Jori Lehtera with is left pad after a pretty passing play, then robbed Jaden Schwartz of what seemed like a sure goal on an odd-man break – and three of four forward lines can contribute a goal, they can beat great teams when the blue line keeps it tight.

Yes, that's a lengthy procession of "ifs," and no, the Habs aren't going to win the President's Trophy this season (although the current odds may make it worth a punt).

It's not yet time to anoint the Canadiens as the class of the East, not until they can play this way consistently.

Still, this is a team in the ascendancy, and nights like Thursday provide a snapshot of what the future should hold once the youngsters fully mature and a couple of roster deficiencies, especially on the back end, are fully addressed.

The Habs still aren't among the serious favourites to win the Stanley Cup this season, but it's not hard to see how they gain entry to the club.

That said, the Blues aren't the Pens – they don't have the same offensive firepower – or the Blackhawks or Kings. But they are deep, and they're built to win now.

They've also manhandled Montreal in each of the past three seasons, but other than some good pressure early in the game and late, they didn't get a sniff.

Price was immense, Max Pacioretty was clinical, Lars Eller and his linemates forced St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock to alter his match-ups and send out his top defensive pair against them, all in all it approached the hockey equivalent of Total Football – comprehensive victory.

The Habs even managed to play 60 minutes without giving the opposition a single power-play – a first this season for a team that takes more minor penalties than 28 other teams (only Winnipeg has taken more).

It passed relatively unnoticed, but the Habs' top defensive tandem of Andrei Markov and P.K. Subban turned in their cleanest, most efficient performance of the season; playing the hardest minutes, Subban posted the highest possession metrics of any player in the game, and also chipped in an assist.

He and Markov also roundly out-played Subban's Olympic teammates Jay Bouwmeester and Alex Pietrangelo at both ends of the ice.

They were on the ice when Vladimir Tarasenko scored a fluky first-period goal (although only an elite talent can whack a fluttering puck out of the air twice on the same sequence), but other than that, 76 and 79 gave up precious little.

That kind of effectiveness is a tougher ask from players like Alexei Emelin, who has benefited from Gonchar's phlegmatic steadiness, and Mike Weaver, both of whom tend to have trouble when they find themselves out against the other team's top two lines. Against the Blues, though, both played well.

It seems clear the Habs' front office isn't sold on the idea of plugging youngsters Nathan Beaulieu and Jarred Tinordi into full-time minutes, Thursday's trade acquisition of journeyman blue-liner Bryan Allen – a former teammate of GM Marc Bergevin who has a big shot, meaty frame, and slow feet – likely nudges them further down the depth chart (although it also clears the cap space chewed up by Rene Bourque's contract, which is a net plus).

That isn't a permanent state of affairs, Gonchar, Allen, and Weaver are all free agents next summer.

It does suggest, however, that Bergevin and coach Michel Therrien think it's best to ride with savvy veterans for the moment, presumably because the points accumulated in the club's first 21 games – the highest total at this point in a season in almost 60 years – mean it's worth examining whether this team may be ahead of schedule in its ascension to the NHL's rarefied heights.

In any case, on this night the Habs showed that on their day they can compete with, as Pacioretty said after the game, "the big boys."

That it came immediately after a terrible showing against Pittsburgh should be all the more encouraging for Habs fans.

Interact with The Globe