MONTREAL — Juraj Slafkovský and Jayden Struble, on the surface at least, don’t appear to live in similar worlds.
Slafkovský is a No. 1 pick who extended his points streak to an NHL career-high nine games in the Montreal Canadiens’ 4-1 win against the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday night. Just him tapping his stick on the ice feverishly before setting up captain Nick Suzuki for his 30th goal of the season is a sign of how confident Slafkovský is feeling these days.
SON 30e DE LA SAISON!
GOAL NO. 3️⃣0️⃣ OF THE SEASON FOR NICK!#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/AbFzdiar83
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) March 28, 2024
Struble is almost three years older than Slafkovský, but is an NHL rookie, one who had an excellent game against the Flyers, but also one who has been searching for consistency of late, a process Slafkovský has already gone through.
And that is where the two are not all that different, and where the Canadiens will need to concentrate a lot of energy in the coming years as more rookies arrive and have to go through that same process.
Thursday provided a window into how the Canadiens will manage that process, and it starts with coach Martin St. Louis, but it’s reflected through Slafkovský and Struble.
Struble was asked Thursday morning what he’s been focused on since re-entering the lineup after being scratched in three of four games, and his answer was revealing.
“I’d say it’s just getting back from where I fell into a little bit of normalcy, kind of,” he said. “I’d been here for like 40 games and it’s easy to kind of be like, I’m here type of thing. I think I’ve been getting back to that urgency every shift, just proving something every shift type of thing.
“I think that’s helped me the last couple of games, just getting back to that urgency.”
The key word there is “normalcy” because that is the exact word St. Louis used to describe what Struble was talking about. It made it sound like this is something he talked to Struble about, even though this is something St. Louis didn’t feel as a player for years after establishing himself in the NHL.
“I feel as a player, at a certain point in time, you hit the stage of normalcy, and you’ve got to be very cautious when you hit that stage,” St. Louis said. “Some players hit that stage way too soon. They think they’ve arrived. For me, maybe people felt like I had arrived, but I never thought I had arrived. So my normalcy happened later, and probably at the right time to be able to have the career that I had.
“So yeah, young players, you’ve got to be careful that you have 30 or 40 games and now you think you’ve arrived, and to me it’s that normalcy. Because when they come in, they’re excited, they’re on high alert, then all of a sudden you get complacent. It’s that normalcy stage. Well, beware of that normalcy stage. Don’t be in that stage too soon.”
For Slafkovský, no one would really blame him if he already started feeling that normalcy, despite still being 19. He has put up 33 points in his last 41 games, half a season of work, but the memory of his 18 points in his first 70 NHL games remains fresh in his mind. He has not reached normalcy, not yet anyway, and that explains why he’s been able to maintain this stretch of quality play.
“No, I feel like you’ve got to prove it every night, no matter what, because you never know when you’ll have worse times, and you never know what’s going to happen,” Slafkovský said after the game. “So you’ve got to play with that same urgency every single night. I feel like every guy in this locker room thinks like that. You’ve always got to have urgency, no one has a spot and there’s always young guys coming in the league, and everyone just wants to make it.
“So you might be here today, but maybe next year, you might not be able to make it if you don’t put all your effort in.”
That attitude is something that the Canadiens will need to nurture to make sure it permeates the room as it continues getting younger with prospects taking the jobs of veterans, a process that should hit overdrive over the next two or three years. But having one of your key young players thinking this way while in the midst of his most successful stretch as an NHL player is a very good start.
“I would say I want to raise my standards every time, and I want to keep them high,” Slafkovský said. “Obviously I will have bad games, that’s for sure, that’s going to happen. But I want to make sure that even my bad games are still good enough to be able to do something on the ice and help the team. Even if I’m not having a good game, the other 17 guys could be having a good game and I just want to make sure my bad is still good enough to be effective and be able to help my teammates and linemates. Because being on the first line, you have to perform every night, and that’s what I want to do.”
The fact Slafkovský has that attitude is an excellent sign, but the fact someone like Struble has already gone through not having that attitude can also be very valuable. The more players who experience the consequences of losing that edge, that urgency, and understanding that the line between being an NHL player and being a former NHL player can be razor thin, the better off the Canadiens will be.
And Struble has quickly understood.
“It didn’t all hit me at one time, it’s kind of like a process you go through,” he said. “It takes time to eventually (realize it), you look back and you say, ‘Maybe I was getting a little bit complacent.’ I’d say there was a week or two in there where things started to, I wouldn’t say slip, I was doing the same things, but maybe got a little bit more relaxed, I would say.
“Then obviously, getting scratched was a sign that I’ve got to pick it up here and get back to what was bringing me so much success.”
This is what urgency looks like for Struble as he chases his man to the top of the defensive zone and doesn’t relent, creating a turnover and joining the rush to get a good scoring chance.
He’s learned his lesson.
The Canadiens’ win Thursday was their third in a row, their longest stretch of wins this season. That may not matter much to people on the outside, but it matters in that dressing room.
But for those who fail to see the relevance of these games down the stretch of another season out of the playoffs for the Canadiens, nurturing the importance of that urgency is just one example of why they are valuable. When people talk about developing a culture, this is the kind of thing they are talking about. Young players already know how hard it is to make the NHL because they just went through it, but some may not realize how hard it is to stay in the NHL.
That is something St. Louis not only realized throughout his playing career, he also spent the first half of his career needing to convince himself he had even made the NHL to begin with despite a mountain of evidence suggesting he had.
When asked after the game when he began to feel some normalcy in the NHL, St. Louis quipped that he felt it at age 39, the year he retired. But he figured he was probably in his 30s, before adding with a smile, “Maybe it was after the Hart, Art Ross.”
St. Louis had just turned 29 when he won those trophies, on top of the Stanley Cup, in 2004.
For a young team looking to set a high bar for normalcy and maintain a sense of urgency until reaching that bar, that seems like a perfectly ambitious place to start.
(Photo of Juraj Slafkovsky and Scott Laughton: David Kirouac / USA Today)
