- Martin St-Louis after Friday’s 6-1 Game 5 loss to Carolina: “It should put gas on the fire”
- St-Louis pointed to his own second-round bus ride as a young player as the moment that lit it for him
- Read below for the full Game 5 media ops, Lane Hutson’s warning, and where the young Habs go from here
Martin St-Louis isn’t letting the Canadiens feel sorry for themselves.
After Friday’s 6-1 Game 5 loss to Carolina sent the Habs home from the Eastern Conference Final, the head coach told his group what he wanted them to take from the run.
“It should put gas on the fire,” St-Louis said. “It should make them feel hungry.”
Here’s the full Game 5 post-game availability from Lenovo Center:
St-Louis leaned on his own playing days to make the point. He won the Stanley Cup in Tampa in 2004, but he had to lose first to learn what the chase really took.
“I remember my first experience losing in the second round of the playoffs,” the 50-year-old said. “I was so upset on the bus because I couldn’t believe I had to go through another 82 games before I get to have this fun. I think that when you taste that, it makes you hungrier, because we’ve had a lot of fun. There’s been waves and stuff, but it’s been unbelievable to go through it.”
Montreal opened the series with a 6-2 shocker in Game 1 and then ran into a buzzsaw. Carolina won four straight, outscored the Habs 15-4 over those four, and outshot them 139-67.
The Hurricanes are headed to their first Stanley Cup Final since they won it in 2006.
Lane Hutson knows the league saw what Montreal did this year. He just doesn’t want the room treating that like they’ve arrived.
“These teams are hungry, they’re coming, they see what we’re doing, and we’re not sneaking up on anyone necessarily,” Hutson said. “We feel like expectations are we’re supposed to be one of these teams, so we’ve just gotta bring it right from the start.”
Catch the full post-game scrums from Montreal’s own channel:
The Canadiens hadn’t reached a conference final in a full season since 2014. Nick Suzuki is still 26 and the room is locked in around Hutson, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Ivan Demidov. The pieces are there, even if the run ended four wins shy of the Final.
