MONTREAL — The frustration was heavy in the Montreal Canadiens’ dressing room Sunday after a 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals in Game 4, giving the Capitals a 3-1 series lead with a chance to eliminate the Canadiens on Wednesday at home.
Frustration is normal when you lose a playoff game at home, when you are facing elimination and when you feel as though you were wronged, which the Canadiens felt they were.
Their head coach left no doubt of that.
“I feel bad for the group a little bit,” Martin St. Louis said. “I don’t really know what to tell them. If you have some answers for me, you can let me know.”
When asked later why he didn’t know what to tell them, even though it was clear he was talking about the officiating without wanting to talk about the officiating, St. Louis was willing to explain himself with a bit more clarity.
“I just don’t know. I don’t know. It’s hard,” he said. “I’ll be careful with my words, but it’s hard to watch some of these calls. To me, tonight, a lot of the mandate was about embellishing tonight.”
He left it there until he was again asked to clarify what he meant by the mandate and how that process works. It starts with general manager Kent Hughes, St. Louis explained, who speaks to the series supervisor the morning of every game to get clarity on what the officials will be looking out for that night.
“We get told the things they want to clean up or whatever,” St. Louis said. “So, embellishment was one of them.”
To be fair, the hooking penalty Joel Armia was called for on Tom Wilson that put the Capitals on a two-man advantage, already leading 1-0 early in the second period, looked like Wilson fell on his own. Was it a dive? Perhaps. Wilson had already been called for embellishment earlier in the series.
The Canadiens not only killed that five-on-three, it was a major momentum shift in the game, and they scored the next two goals on the power play to take the lead and put the Capitals on their heels in a major way.
“I just felt that at the end of the second period, our group was extremely deflated,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “And you could feel that — not feeling sorry for ourselves, but just, ‘Aw, we missed our opportunity on the five-on-three, it should’ve been 2-0, now we’re down 2-1.’”
Perhaps the Canadiens felt some of the other penalties they were called for were also embellishment. They surely do.
But did it matter? Was it the primary reason why they lost? No.
The Canadiens scored two power-play goals, the Capitals scored none. The Capitals’ five power plays might have prevented the Canadiens from building some momentum, but those failed power plays prevented the Capitals from doing the same, and gave the Canadiens momentum each time.
It is extremely important that the Canadiens – from the coach on down – understand that, accept that and address that heading into a Game 5 that can end their season.
This is a big part of playoff hockey, something that is new to a good chunk of this group. You will have missed calls. The pace is high, the line between what is a penalty and what is not gets blurred and the referees will make mistakes. They are human.
But hockey people love to say you need to control what you can control, and the Canadiens have no control over that.
What they can control to a far greater degree is how the Capitals carried large chunks of play at five-on-five, how they outscored the Canadiens 3-0 in that game state, and how they were able to manipulate a previously unfavourable matchup situation by getting Dylan Strome away from Nick Suzuki.
You should never want an opposing coach to say this, as Carbery did, in the playoffs, particularly after a home game: “Honestly, I liked how (the matchups) played out a lot.”
In other words, there were elements of this game that the Canadiens could have controlled, and therefore focusing on one of the few things they could not control is wasted energy and missing the point of this game entirely.
St. Louis said multiple times in the second half of the season that the Canadiens are done learning, that it was time to execute.
Well, analytics don’t always tell the entire story, but they tell at least a part of it, and how can anyone on the Canadiens look at this and feel the reason they lost was the officiating?
NHL GameScore Impact Card for Montreal Canadiens on 2025-04-27: pic.twitter.com/0PBg3gvJqp
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) April 28, 2025
The Canadiens were also upset by this Wilson hit that knocked defenceman Alexandre Carrier out of the game in the third period and led directly to the Capitals tying the score 2-2 on a goal St. Louis described as “fluky.”
Tom Wilson ROCKED Alexandre Carrier, leading to the Caps’ game-tying goal! 💥 pic.twitter.com/1YjY6cvyPZ
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 28, 2025
That hit might be a bit high, but Carrier was eligible to be hit, and the last person the Canadiens would have wanted to take advantage of that eligibility ultimately made the hit. No one likes to see a teammate rocked and forced to leave the game, but again, this is playoff hockey.
You need to be accountable in the playoffs and understand that results don’t lie. The Canadiens were good in this game. There are positives they can build on for the next game, particularly the power play and the growing confidence of Ivan Demidov, who assisted on both power-play goals.
But overall, they were not good enough. They were not able to close out a game where the Capitals felt “completely deflated” with 20 minutes left to play. They did not manage the circumstances of that game all that well with a chance to even the series.
At least Cole Caufield seemed to understand that.
“At the end of the day, only one team wins,” he said. “We had the lead going into the third, a couple of tough bounces. But I think it’s right there for us, and we’ve just got to find a way to move on and be better for the next game.”
That’s where the focus should lie, being better in the next game, and maybe after a good night’s sleep, the Canadiens’ focus will appropriately shift to that on Monday.
They have two days to regroup and make sure they are better for the next game.
That is within their control.
The Canadiens, who have playoff experience, including captain Nick Suzuki, must help this young team adjust. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
After Game 2, Christian Dvorak made it clear the Canadiens are not here to soak in the playoff experience, to help the rebuild advance. They are in the playoffs to win a series that they believe they are capable of winning.
“We don’t want to just be here to learn lessons,” Dvorak said. “We’re in the playoffs here. We have a good team here, we believe in ourselves, and we know we can beat this team.”
There might have been a lesson to be learned in Game 4, and the Canadiens would do well to learn it in time for Game 5.
No one will feel sorry for you in the playoffs, and the worst thing you can do is feel sorry for yourselves.
What has to happen instead is looking inward as to why you lost a game you needed to win, and how that can help you win a game on Wednesday that you have to win.
Suzuki casually dropped after the game that, “I’ve been down 3-1 before.”
That was in 2021, when the Canadiens trailed the Toronto Maple Leafs exactly the way they trail the Capitals now, heading on the road with their season on the line. At the time, the Canadiens were a veteran-heavy team. Carey Price, Shea Weber, Corey Perry, Eric Staal — all of them addressed the team before Game 5 against the Maple Leafs to tell them how rare these opportunities are, how they need to make sure they take advantage of what is ahead of them.
Suzuki was the target audience for that message back then. He was 21, a kid.
Now he’s 25 and team captain. It’s time for him to deliver that message.
“Me and the other guys that have been through the playoffs, it can be demoralizing at times, but we’re a group that really continues to work,” Suzuki said. “We’re not going to go into the night lightly.”
(Top photo of Josh Anderson: Vitor Munhoz / NHLI via Getty Images)