Canadiens down 3-1 to Hurricanes after another no-show at home

MONTREAL — The Canadiens have faced elimination in these playoffs before. But never with multiple games standing between them and the offseason.

That’s where Montreal is now after a 4-0 loss to Carolina in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals Wednesday night that put the Canadiens in a 3-1 series deficit. Game 5 is Friday.

The Hurricanes put on a clinic, outshooting the Canadiens 43-18 — with a 95-45 edge in shot attempts — and carrying play from start to finish. Not even the Canadiens could explain their poor performance on home ice (now with a 2-6 postseason record there) knowing what was at stake if they fell behind — again — in a critical outing.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory, I guess,” defenseman Lane Hutson said. “S— game. I think this was our worst game at home.”

It’s not as if the Canadiens haven’t weathered adversity in the playoffs before; they went the distance in the first round against Tampa Bay and in the second against Buffalo. But they hadn’t dropped consecutive games in either outing. Now, Montreal has lost three straight — a first since November — and there’s nothing left to do but treat every matchup like a Game 7.

“It wasn’t good enough, we didn’t answer the bell,” Hutson said. “But we have another chance. We are a good enough team, a good enough group. We just have to dig deep.”

The Canadiens were out of sorts from the start. Carolina was easily outshooting them early on but faltered with a pair of offensive zone infractions against Jalen Chatfield and Taylor Hall. Montreal missed out on a masterful opportunity to capitalize on those errors — and when the Hurricanes got a second chance on their own man advantage, Sebastian Aho made the Canadiens pay with the game’s opening marker.

It was the fourth straight time in this series that Carolina has been on the board first, and Aho’s strike opened the floodgates. Jordan Staal, while bodying for position with Josh Anderson in front of Jakub Dobes, redirected a pass from K’Andre Miller past the netminder to give the Hurricanes a 2-0 lead. Then it was Logan Stankoven putting one more past Dobes to extend Carolina’s advantage to 3-0 through 20 minutes.

“The power-play goal, it was a weird entry, almost offside,” said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki, who has zero points in the past three games. “And the next shift they got another quick one, and then when [Stankoven] scored the third, the game changed quickly. We had to try to find a way and we couldn’t find one to get going.”

Indeed, it was all Dobes could do from there to give Montreal a fighting chance. He was inarguably the Canadiens’ best player (with a 39-save effort) and slammed the door in every respect through the final 40 minutes.

Coach Martin St. Louis put his lines in a blender after the opening frame, but it didn’t do much to improve the Canadiens’ offensive output. They leaned on goaltending again to see them through, and it was with Dobes on the bench that Andrei Svechnikov potted an empty-netter for Carolina’s final salvo.

“We’ve made some adjustments, but it takes execution,” St. Louis said. “It takes game reading and execution in anything. We lacked a bit of that.”

Nothing Montreal did could penetrate Carolina goaltender Frederik Andersen, who set a franchise record with his fifth career playoff shutout.

Despite Dobes’ efforts at the other end to keep the Canadiens in striking distance, he wasn’t willing to shrug off responsibility.

“It’s on everyone — on me, on the guys,” Dobes said. “We couldn’t come back. We have to be better. I can’t allow three goals. You try to keep it tight as much as possible, but I’ll learn from it for Game 5.”

Dobes can’t do it alone. Montreal has only 65 shots on net in this series. Carolina has blocked more pucks (68) than that. The Canadiens have been outshot 136-65 and if that continues there won’t be much change to the scoreboard in Game 5.

“We’re shooting but they’re getting blocks, we’re missing the net; it’s not like we aren’t shooting the puck,” Suzuki said. “We’re shooting but it’s about execution and getting it done in the end. We are putting a little too much pressure on ourselves to make perfect plays. Could be because we are a young team, but hopefully we win Game 5 and come back here.”

A chorus of “shoot the puck” emanated from the Bell Centre crowd as time wound down on the Canadiens’ defeat. Either way, Montreal’s players didn’t love the reaction.

“It’s not going to make any difference,” Hutson said. “We’re just as annoyed. We have to dig and find the answers and be better.”

It has been a theme throughout the playoffs that the Canadiens can’t explain how they don’t show up at home like they do on the road.

Dobes again offered no explanation for the disparity, claiming the team was “prepared, energized and happy” going into the night, but something just “isn’t clocking at home,” so Montreal will try and make the best of its road warrior reputation.

“I feel like our best hockey comes when we have our backs against the wall,” Dobes said. “This is going to be exciting. Tomorrow is a new day. We will have a great time on the plane, have a team dinner, and we promise to play our best hockey in Game 5 and come back for Game 6.”

The loss didn’t exactly put Dobes in a mood to celebrate his 25th birthday, but he did have family in town and planned to have cake and get some shut-eye. What did give Dobes hope of brighter days was how Montreal has responded to adversity in the past.

“I feel like we’ve been underdogs all season, the whole playoffs,” Dobes said. “We are super underdogs now. I don’t know what makes [the Hurricanes] so special. I just focus on their moves and trying to stop the puck. We will go to Carolina and try to win Game 5 and try to get to Game 7 again. I can play a good amount of hockey. I can definitely play the next round. Hopefully we will get there.”