The Canadiens’ decision on Juraj Slafkovský will need to come soon, and they must nail it
TEMPE, Ariz. — The optics are not great.
Logan Cooley, the No. 3 pick in the 2022 NHL draft, streaking down the left side on a third-period power play, just a few minutes after Brendan Gallagher had tied the game for the Canadiens, attracting attention and coolly (sorry) sliding the puck over to a wide-open Nick Schmaltz for the winning goal in a 3-2 Arizona Coyotes victory on Thursday.
It was Cooley’s eighth point of his rookie season in his 10th game — six of those points have come on the power play, but they still count.
The No. 1 pick in 2022 watched that goal happen from the Canadiens bench. Juraj Slafkovsk craves that feeling Cooley had Thursday night, the puck on his stick, the game on the line, and the puck in the back of the net. That came one night after Cooley scored his first NHL goal in Anaheim, one that “relieved the pressure from his shoulders,” his coach André Tourigny said before the game.
He’s an offensive guy. He’s fueled by that,” Tourigny said, “so it was an important goal for him.”
Slafkovský had a single shot attempt against the Coyotes. It came at 4:57 of the first period on a power play, and it was blocked. From that point on, nothing.
Monday night in Las Vegas, Slafkovský had zero shot attempts.
He, too, is an offensive guy. He, too, is fueled by that. Slafkovský now has 11 points in his first 49 NHL games spread over two seasons, or three more than Cooley has in his first 10 games. Going back to last season, Slafkovský has one assist and 21 shots on goal in his last 25 games.
Again, the optics are not great, with the Coyotes social media team seizing on the opportunity with considerably violent intentions.
But optics are not reality. The Slafkovský-Cooley storyline was relevant for this one game, but the Canadiens need to be concerned with something far more concrete than optics and social media memes hurting their feelings.
One of the factors the Canadiens cited in choosing to draft Slafkovský at No. 1 at the Bell Centre just 16 months ago was his mental makeup, his confident personality that would allow him to withstand the pressure of a market like Montreal.
To withstand a situation exactly like what is going on right now, with much of the fan base calling for Slafkovský to be sent down to the AHL, expressing concern all over social media that the Canadiens made the wrong decision and with some flat out calling Slafkovský a bust before his 20th birthday, which won’t come until the end of March.
And the reality is that is not what Slafkovský really needs to withstand. It is true that his personality is well-suited to handle external pressure. But his personality is also naturally wired to produce massive amounts of internal pressure. He has high standards for himself, standards he is not meeting, and it seems to be snowballing into a situation where Slafkovský has no confidence in making anything happen with the puck on his stick.
Take his work on the power play as an example. The reason he is playing on the right flank on the power play is to shoot one-timers. To score goals. But when you watch him closely, you’ll notice his feet are almost never set in a shooting position. He most often gets the puck from the top of the power play, and when he gets the puck, he is making it obvious his number one intention is to send the puck back to the top, not shoot toward the net.
He is not a threat.
He is sixth among Canadiens forwards in ice time at 14:19 per game, which, by definition, is top-six minutes. He is getting time on the power play. He is getting opportunities.
The results aren’t there. The process seemed to be there for the first few games of the season, and with some better luck he would have gotten more points in that stretch, a few Josh Anderson converted breakaways would have given him a few more assists.
But the process is slipping hard now, especially in his last three or four games.
As Tourigny said, offensive players need to feel like they are producing offence. Real offence, not abstract, process-based offence.
“I talk to Juraj all the time,” Martin St. Louis said just before the game. “Of course, if you start producing, you’re going to feel more confident. But for me, where he goes on the ice, how many touches he gets, I think it’s just a matter of time. It’s just to keep going.
“But yeah, you definitely have conversations, because I know it can get heavy.”
Does St. Louis think Slafkovský is buying the value of puck touches and where he goes on the ice?
“I think so,” St. Louis said. “I’m pretty sure he does.”
Talk to any of Slafkovský’s teammates, and they will all mention how hard he is on himself.
“I think he’s fine,” Cole Caufield said after practice Wednesday. “He can be a little bit hard on himself sometimes, but that’s just because he’s a competitor and he wants to be the best.”
