Eric Engels
December 15, 2023, 3:12 p.m.
Broussard, Q. – Josh Anderson had four shots on goal, one blocked, two misses and a missed shootout attempt after 10 of Montreal’s 12 attackers were used against him, and he was left with this feeling all too familiar – and heavy – to know that he could have made the difference between winning and losing, but he didn’t.
Games like the one on Wednesday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins have haunted the Canadian forward since the start of the season.
He has one goal to his name out of 29 in total. The shot came from a distance of about 200 feet and scored into an empty net. Each second of gameplay that passes without the next seems like an eternity.
It almost feels like the net has become smaller for him too.
As Anderson watched another open play Wednesday — this time from less than 30 feet away in the third period of the loss to the Penguins — he fired a shot just over. He stood in the middle of the slot, looking at his team’s best chance to break a 3-3 tie, but he didn’t come close to converting.
Anderson did not come close during the penalty shootout, which added to his suffering.
“It’s been very difficult, I’m not going to lie,” he said Thursday. “I mean, usually every day you think about when are you going to come out of this crisis and start putting them in the net. »
It’s easy to say he should focus on something else. Perhaps by repeatedly delivering the physical strength that his six-foot-three, 224-pound frame can brutally provide.
But a big part of Anderson’s job is scoring, and he knows it.
It’s something he’s done at a high enough level to earn him a seven-year, $38.5 million contract in 2020, and it’s something he’s done 57 more times over the course of of three seasons immediately after signing this contract with Montreal.
This season, during which Anderson earns the highest salary of his contract ($8 million), the puck seems to be playing tricks on him. It tortures him.
And no one can solve Anderson’s problem.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis does everything he can to build the player’s confidence, talking to him during practice and designing drills for all of Montreal’s ball carriers to improve their shooting touch. aim. However, all he can do is sympathize.
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“The best way to describe it is when you’re struggling offensively, when your confidence is low, sometimes it’s like you’re playing a game and looking through a roll of toilet paper,” St. Louis said THURSDAY. . “When you have that much confidence, it’s like you have eyes in the back of your head.
“So it works [widen the lens]And it doesn’t happen like that (snaps fingers). but [widening the lens] This doesn’t just happen in games; You have to work on it with virtually every rep you do.
Anderson does. He spent a lot of time working on his shot during practice Thursday and Friday.
But the psychological scar tissue is growing and will only heal when the ball starts following him in games.
Saint-Louis knows it.
“When you play the game, you look up [through such a narrow lens] “As an attacking player, as a guy who knows he can score goals, it can be a bit stifling, it gets heavy sometimes. »
Anderson is doing the best he can, hoping he will soon be able to breathe better.
On a lighter note…
In a hockey world of bland, generic and completely uncreative nicknames, the Canadiens have a few that really stand out.
Last season, shortly after making his debut with the Canadiens, Arber Cicaj revealed to us that his teammate Chris Weidman nicknamed him “WiFi” because the spelling of his last name resembles a certain password to connect to the Internet .
This was well received by fans, but quickly faded with Xhekaj’s teammates, who often called him “X” or “Arbs”.
This is comparable to most of the team’s other nicknames, which are either abbreviations of their personal names or extensions of them with the letter Y at the end.
“Snacks” by Samuel Montembole departs nicely from this trend. But David Savard’s nickname for the Canadian goalie is just an observation on his snacking habits and hardly sets the bar for creativity.
However, calling Mike Matheson “Billy” is definitely true.
We only noticed that was the defender’s nickname after captain Nick Suzuki dropped it in a post-match response about the team’s strength earlier this season.
Before questioning Matheson on Friday about Adam Sandler’s poem Billy Madisonwe wanted to know if any of his teammates knew the origin of his nickname.
Jonathan Kovacevic guessed the message came from Sean Monahan, who one day looked at Kovacevic’s nameplate and randomly started calling him “Kovatizer.”
“Mooney always thinks of creative names and he comes up with them nonchalantly,” Kovacevic said.
But it wasn’t Monahan who called Matheson “Billy.”
“It was Mike Hoffman,” Matheson said after making us guess that we would never win. “He started calling me ‘Billy’ when we played together in Florida, but it never caught on with the other members of the team. He always called me that. And then I was here for about a month last year, and all of a sudden all of a sudden we were going out to eat… Dinner, and everyone was already there, and I think Huff had said, “Billy is on his way.”
“Everyone was like, ‘Who?’
“Then I had dinner and everyone was like, ‘Billy!!!’
“Since then, I have been “Billy”.
The funny thing is, 19-year-old Juraj Slavkovski has been calling Matheson “Billy” for over a year and doesn’t know why.
“There’s no proof,” he said after Wednesday’s practice. “That’s exactly what we call it.” »
“It’s funny, but it’s a tie,” Kovacevic said. “I don’t know if this film made it to Slovakia. »
Emil Heinemann is there?
It was a devastating strike, accidentally thrown by a referee who was jumping to avoid a fight on the boards, and he ended up hitting Emil Heinemann directly in the head with his knee.
It’s not a good time to suffer a concussion, but it happened after a strong finish to training camp with the Canadiens left Heineman knocking on the NHL’s door. He struggled in the second AHL game of the season, missing the next twenty games while the Canadiens’ forwards quickly bowed out due to injuries.
The “problem” was how Heinemen referred to the time he was injured, but that doesn’t bother him anymore now that he’s with the Canadiens.
Tanner Pearson recently suffered a hand injury that will keep him out for four to six weeks as Heinemann returns to action in Laval after returning to action in early December. Thus, the young Swede was called up at the start of the week.
St. Louis did not say Friday whether Heineman would make his NHL debut Saturday, but it did mention what it expects to eventually see from the player who joined the Canadiens in the trade of Tyler Toffili with the Calgary Flames two seasons ago. .
“I think it’s his speed, his skating, his physicality,” St. Louis said. “And I think when he showed what I was feeling, maybe in the second part of camp, his game took off a little bit. For me, he has to play fast, be physical and win fights. He’s a good shooter, but a lot has to happen before he shoots. » .
That’s the lesson Heineman learned after a rough start to training camp, when he teamed up with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield and failed to capitalize.
“I talked to (Canadian director of development) Adam (Nicholas) after half-camp and I just said I’m not where I want to perform there,” Heineman said Friday. “I had to stop overthinking, play, be aggressive and use my strength more. It was a turning point, the last two weeks of camp, and it really made a difference.
He insists there will be no hesitation this time.
“You have to learn from it, of course, and go play,” Heineman said. “There’s not much to think about, it’s just a hockey game, so you don’t need to think too much – just play and stay in the moment. »
2023-12-16 04:14:53
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