Mental strength | The Journal of Montreal

Philip Donald is the perfect symbol for this match. Yes, he missed the Maple Leafs’ first goal when he lost a puck at the hands of Aston Mathews. But he forgot about this bad game and found a way to come back stronger.

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The same is true for Canadians. During the first period, CH did not touch the puck. Silently, the team finally regained the confidence to knock down the best structure in the North Division with two goals in the third period. The success of the character. The success of the will.

“I work mentally, hockey is just mental,” Donald recalled a few minutes after the 2-1 win over the Leafs. I had to forget my mistake, we wanted to push to achieve big success. We finally received our reward for our work. “

Donald made an interesting comparison to the team this year and last season.

“Positively I see a difference with last year. We kept losing, but we could not find a way to get up. We have the mental strength that we did not have last year.”

“There is faith, but there is also will,” Claude Julian added. Willpower is what got us out of the toughest start to the game. We made a lot of preparations for this match, especially after a difficult week. As the match progressed so much we saw things doing well at the start of the season. We want to build with this game. “

Tatar in the stands

Tomas Tatar led the CH with 61 points (22 goals, 39 assists) in 68 games last year. He finished second in team scoring in 2018-19 with 58 points. For two years, he played 95% of the time on the left wing of the first row with Danault and Brendan Gallagher.

For this match in Toronto, Slovak received a clear warning from Claude Julian, who showed the way to the Press Bridge.

“Our standards are high this year, Julian explains to justify his choice. Thomas is not a bad player, but much is expected of him. Not only on the score sheet, but elsewhere. He loses the puck, he doesn’t take it out of his zone. Small details. We put Perry, We want to put him in the power play against the Leafs. We have no injuries, we have guys to play with. We want to keep everyone honest. We expect good games from everyone. “

In 14 games this season, Tatar has scored 8 points (4 goals, 4 assists). He has been on the left wing of the third row since the third season of Wednesday’s game with Maple Leafs.

He dropped even more coming out of training for the first time.