In Habs’s Room: ‘Breaks Your Back’, Says Ben Chiarot Of Costly Mistakes

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BUFFALO – It wasn’t difficult for Dominique Ducharme to point out what went wrong for the Canadiens in their 4-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabers on Friday.

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“It’s frustrating, you become your own worst enemy,” Ducharme said. “We are in the NHL, you have to be able to make plays. It does not mean that you have to make the plays of the week, just be efficient, smart and execute the instructions well. As soon as we get away from that, we don’t have a system to defend that.

“We played well in the first period,” added Ducharme. “They scored the first goal, but we stuck with our system. “We should have done it for 60 minutes. We ended up breaking and we made bad plays with the disc ”.

The most costly error occurred at the end of the period of seconds. Montreal had been dominated the entire period and fell behind 2-1, but they had a chance to tie the game when Brett Murray went to the penalty area for four minutes for Jake Evans.

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“We had momentum, but I did a bad pass to the skates (from Nick Suzuki) and they went down 2v1, 2v2, and they took the rebound and scored,” Jonathan Drouin said. “It changed our momentum. Power plays can change the momentum and even if you don’t score, you have something when you come back 5v5, but that didn’t happen for us. “

“A four minute power play you have to score and then they get a shortie at the end, that hurts,” defender Ben Chiarot said.

Kyle Okposo’s short goal put an exclamation point in a period in which the Canadiens were outshot 14-2, with the second shot coming from the power play.

Chiarot said costly mistakes at crucial moments were the Canadiens’ undoing.

“It breaks your back when you give up goals at inopportune times and that was the story of this game,” Chiarot said.

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Chiarot was asked if Canadians were fragile and had lost their confidence.

“You really don’t have the option to lose confidence,” Chiarot said. “We have a game (Saturday in Pittsburgh) and we have to go out with confidence, clear our game.

“There is no lack of confidence, it is just a matter of getting the puck out and playing a fair game and not making big mistakes that put our goalkeeper in a difficult situation,” added Chiarot. “A lot of those goals tonight were point-blank shots from the slot and are difficult for the goalkeeper to stop.”

Sam Montembeault, who scored his first win last week against Nashville, must have felt like he was in a shooting gallery when the Sabers fired 39 pucks at him.

Josh Anderson was the only player to beat former Canadiens goalkeeper Dustin Tokarski and earned Ducharme’s recognition as Montreal’s best forward.

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Anderson suggested that some of the veterans have to do a better job leading.

“It starts with the older guys, you have to play your game, do what you do,” Anderson said. “I think we have to be better. There are younger guys who come up and admire us and they are the ones who are working, they are competing. I am not saying that they are all, I include myself, the coherence is not there. We have to fight this together because you want to come to the track every day and have fun. “

Any fun is something that a team that has won just five of its 22 games has been lacking.

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