Guhle leads the Canadiens’ young players in season-opening win over the Maple Leafs

MONTREAL — There was Kaiden Guhle, cornered by Calle Jarnkrok and Alexander Kerfoot, being pushed into the left quadrant of his own zone with no exit option in sight.

With the puck on his stick, Guhle turned, kicked Kerfoot to the side, slipped the stick through the trap, walked around Jarnkrok and fired a tape-to-tape pass over his own blue line and over the red line to Rem Pitlick off, who threw the puck out of danger and into the Toronto zone.

It was a subtle, intelligent play from the defenseman that made you forget, for almost a second, that he was playing in his very first NHL game.

Guhle, who will only turn 21 in January, not only looked comfortable; he looked confident. And not just in that game, but in almost all of them, he scored that surprising 4-3 win for the Montreal Canadiens in their opening game against a Toronto Maple Leafs team that is aiming for the Stanley Cup this season.

He wasn’t the only kid in a Montreal jersey to take a step forward in his development that night, although he would have to be considered the greatest – playing a team-leading 22:34 and pinning the NHL’s deadliest scorer Auston Matthews kept a clean sheet every nine minutes and 33 seconds, taking on him 5-on-5.

“A pretty calm, cool, confident, laid-back kid and it shows in his game,” said Jake Allen, who made 29 saves behind Guhle and the rest of the Canadiens defense. “He’s not upset, I think, not too much.”

Guhle never seemed unsure, not even when there were mistakes. And he did Making mistakes – flipping the puck four times with passes that missed the target or came off his stick in a way he didn’t intend.

But Guhle recovered well.

So did his young teammates.

Take Arber Xhekaj for example. The undrafted 21-year-old also made his debut for the Canadians on Wednesday and things didn’t go particularly smoothly.

He gave up two breakaways in a short amount of second-half time – one of them forced him to hook Kerfoot and offer him a penalty that Allen inevitably stopped – and was caught edging around the Leafs on the goal Denis Malgin scored set up, swung from the position 2-1 near the halfway point of the frame.

But Xhekaj didn’t let that affect him.

“When I play, I tune out everything around me and play the same game that I’ve been playing my whole life,” he said afterwards. “I just stick with my game and shake it off and play. It’s my first game and there will be nerves, but you just keep going. During a game like this, if you look back and remember your mistakes, you’re not going anywhere.”

Xhekaj shrugged off those games, had a couple of good scoring chances, contributed to a penalty shoot-out that kept Toronto scoreless on four occasions and he emerged from it all – after Josh Anderson sealed victory for Montreal with 17 seconds left – and felt happy to understand better how it works on this level.

Juraj Slafkovsky had a similar experience.

The first overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft was a thrill to begin with. When he was introduced to the crowd at the Bell Center, he was so overwhelmed by the ovation that he forgot to stop at center ice as instructed and ran straight to his seat next to Anderson.

Minutes later, on one of his first game changes, Slafkovsky wasn’t looking and crashed straight into Guhle as the defender attempted to sled the puck out of Montreal’s zone.

“That probably helped me,” he said. “After that I woke up.”

Slafkovsky settled in, elicited a power play from his team, had a couple of nice rushes, netted a shot and was greeted in the dressing room after the win by the only other Slovakian in Canadian history wearing his number 20.

“I told him to enjoy the city,” said Richard Zednik, who played five seasons in Montreal from 2001-2006. “I told him it’s a great hockey city to play in and the fans will love you and just keep skating and not think about the ice too much. Just skate and play your game.”

Jordan Harris, the 22-year-old who played ten games for the Canadiens last season, seemed to be doing just that this season.

The defenseman recorded his first NHL assist on Sean Monahan’s first goal as a Canadian that led 2:30 in the third period to a 3-2 win in Montreal, and he played mostly clean in his 25 substitutions.

But Harris wasn’t perfect. He hit Malgin with a high stick three minutes from the Monahan goal and that could have cost dearly.

“But he played great,” said Xhekaj.

All of the Canadiens kids did well, from Harris to Slafkovsky and from Nick Suzuki to Cole Caufield.

The 23-year-old Suzuki set up 21-year-old Caufield for Montreal’s first goal in the 33-second mark of the second period in his first game as Canadiens captain, and Caufield added another just under 15 minutes later.

All in all pretty positive.

“We’ll see what happens when normality sets in and the emotions subside,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis. “I’m curious to see what they look like when that happens.

“But honestly what we’re seeing from the kids is fantastic.”

None of them were better than Guhle, but all took a step forward in this win.