Mikhail Grigorenko didn’t intend to cause all this trouble when he encountered Canadiens defenseman P.K. Subban just inside the Colorado blue line. With Grigorenko in pursuit, Subban skated parallel to the line from his right to his left, but Grigorenko poked the puck off his stick and Subban then fell.
“He had the puck and was skating on the blue line,” Grigorenko told me about a half hour later later in the Avalanche dressing room. “I was just trying to put on pressure.”
Starting the rush the other way, Grigorenko got the puck to Matt Duchene, then took a return pass and patiently fed Jarome Iginla at the edge of the crease, and Iginla had a virtual open net for the late tie-breaking goal in the Avalanche’s 3-2 win Wednesday at the Pepsi Center.
“Matt had more speed coming into the zone, so I just gave it to him and kept driving the net,” Grigorenko said. “Matt saw me there and Jarome was wide open because we both drove the net and their backcheck lost us. So it was an easy play to make.”
If it ended there, I wouldn’t even be talking about this days later. Those would have remained extra quotes in the digital recorder.
Even the best of defensemen foul up, and Subban probably should have sent the puck into the corner. But in most cases, the coach doesn’t go out to the arena’s loading dock and throw his star defenseman under the team bus. That’s essentially what Canadiens coach Michel Therrien did, and the furor in Montreal hadn’t died down as the weekend began.
“The team worked hard,” Therrien said in the post-game scrum outside the visiting dressing room. “We deserved a better result. It’s too bad an individual mistake cost us the game late in the game. … (Subban) could have made a better decision at the blue line. He put himself in a tough position. We play as a team. When we don’t, we could be in trouble, and this is what happened.”
Subban told reporters, “If I do that play all over again and don’t lose an edge, I probably take it down the wall and create something.”
Over the next few days, Therrien and Subban said there was no rift between them. Therrien said he was simply being truthful and that he would have said it about any player who made a costly mistake.
But in Montreal, it all added to the perception that Therrien is coming both: a) unglued; and b) to the end of his second tenure with the Canadiens — even if GM Marc Bergevin, who chose Therrien over Patrick Roy in 2012, sticks to his stated plan to have Therrien finish the rest of the season before evaluation of where to go from there.
From afar, I’m not going to pretend to be able to judge the job Therrien has done. But as the predictable “He lost his team” indictments gain steam — I’m not saying they’re wrong as much as I’m saying they sure sound lamely familiar, right out of the NHL’s “Fire the coach” templates — it’s mind-boggling how little consideration seems to be given the fact that the Canadiens have been without the best goalie in the league, Carey Price, for most of the season.
Absolutely, that doesn’t give Therrien a free pass, whether for his ill-advised, curious remarks about Subban or anything else, but consider that they’re trying to get by with Mike Condon and Ben Scrivens in the net.
Yes, that Ben Scrivens.
And in his three-plus seasons in his second stint behind the Canadiens’ bench, Montreal was 152-93-29 going into Friday night’s home game against Philadelphia.
This is a tough business.
Especially in Montreal.
Terry Frei: tfrei@ or @TFrei
Spotlight on …
Dylan Larkin, center, Red Wings
When: Detroit visits Colorado on Saturday in an NHL Stadium Series game at Coors Field. The Avalanche has a relatively light schedule heading into that historic game, hosting San Jose on Wednesday after Sunday’s contest at Vancouver.
What’s up: Larkin, 19, entered the weekend with a team-leading 19 goals, and his 39 points were second to veteran Henrik Zetterberg. Among NHL rookie scorers, Larkin was tied for second behind Chicago’s Artemi Panarin, 24. Larkin won the fastest skater competition at the NHL All-Star Game last month, breaking the record set by Mike Gartner in 1996.
Background: Larkin was born in Waterford, Mich., and grew up in Clarkston, Mich. He attended the University of Michigan for one season as an 18-year-old freshman before turning pro. He spent his junior and senior years playing for the U.S. National Development Program in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Chambers’ take: Larkin’s all-Michigan background, world-class skill and model character make him the future face of the franchise. Zetterberg, 35, and Pavel Datsyuk, 37, can’t play forever, and Larkin seems like he’ll be a Red Wing for the next 15 to 20 years. Born in 1996, Larkin probably was too young to understand the Avalanche-Red Wings rivalry in its heyday, but he’ll undoubtedly learn much about it this week. Mike Chambers, The Denver Post
