Canadiens' struggles stretch to fourth straight game: 'Keep digging ...

After winning two of their first three games, the Montreal Canadiens looked like they were turning the corner in the rebuild.

But the Canadiens have since lost four straight games, picking up just one point in that span in a shootout loss to the New York Islanders.

They had a pair of tough losses on home ice last week against Pittsburgh (6-3) and Los Angeles (4-1) before things got ugly on Tuesday night in a 7-2 loss to the Rangers. The Canadiens allowed four goals in the opening period, chasing Samuel Montembeault from the net.

Other than two goals from captain Nick Suzuki, it was all New York, who peppered Montembeault and replacement Cayden Primeau with a combined 45 shots against.

Suzuki acknowledged after the game the team keeps putting themselves in the situation of getting down early.

“It didn’t really feel like a 7-2 game until the end there when you look up at the scoreboard,” Suzuki said postgame. “But we obviously keep digging ourselves these holes, and against a good team like that, our details early on have to be really sharp. And we were definitely a little sleepy coming out and they jumped on us.”

Head coach Martin St. Louis is ready to turn the page on the result and use the next three days off to regroup.

“I’m very disappointed with the result,” said St. Louis. “I’m probably going to go home, watch the game, and have a plan tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do tonight about tonight. That game is over.

“Now it’s what’s next that’s important to me. It’s the repair. How are we going to repair some of these things, [like] falling asleep on an icing? I’m sure it’ll get addressed. But there are other parts of the game that we have to be better [at]. Some of it is collectively but some of it is individually.”

Defence has been an issue for the Canadiens, allowing 20 goals against in their past four games as they’ve iced a very young defensive corps with Mike Matheson (30) and David Savard (34) the only defencemen on the roster older than 23.

The rookie defence pairing of Lane Hutson and Logan Mailloux struggled mightily against the more experienced Rangers, as they finished the game at minus-4 and minus-3 respectively. They have a combined 12 NHL games between them.

“It’s hard to win when you give up a field goal before the first TV timeout,” said St. Louis.

The team has also been without the services of defenceman Kaiden Guhle the last two games due to an upper-body injury. Prior to the injury, Guhle was averaging 21:45 minutes of ice time.

The Canadiens are back in action Saturday night against the St. Louis Blues.