Despite the win over Mammoth, the Canadiens’ need for expert help becomes more apparent

It took four minutes and nine seconds for the Montreal Canadiens to turn a 2-0 lead into a 3-2 deficit in Utah on Wednesday, and it was anything but surprising in the second period to watch.

It’s in that middle frame that the youngest team in the National Hockey League has flashed its green this season, with bad penalties and bad puck management often putting them in an awkward position.

On this night, it ended up being all that the Canadians were worth.

But their ability to fight it back and beat the Mammoths 4-3 doesn’t change the fact they have a problem only management can solve at this point.

With veterans Kirby Ditch, Alex Newhoek, Patrick Lane and Kaden Gohl all removed, the youngest team in the league has gotten smaller. And the repeated immaturity the team has shown between games — they’re now minus-11 in second-round goal differential — suggests they’re too young.

That’s why Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes signed 26-year-old Alexandre Tequier to a $1 million contract for the rest of the season on Sunday, and why he can’t stop filling holes both up front and in the back end of his team.

If you want to feel how intense the need has become, forget about re-watching the second season. You can only proceed to the third.

Two rookies saw almost all of it from the team’s bench, with the third not seeing any of the ice.

It made perfect sense for Martin St. Louis not to show Florian Shikaj out of a shift after the Canadiens tied the game 3:20 into the third. It was only his second game in the league.

That Adam Engstrom struck out for three shifts in the third was impressive, considering it was his first career NHL game.

Jared Davidson may not have played in the third regardless of what was the fifth game of his NHL career, but he certainly wasn’t going to go over one after picking up an unsportsmanlike penalty to give the Mammoths a power play directly behind Michael Carcon, capping their three-goal run less than five minutes into the second.

Still, St. Louis’ need to shorten its bench to this extent for the first of three games in four nights, and the first of 16 games in the next 28 nights, was a problem.

The problem was that Mike Matheson had to play 11:12 of the third period, including two shifts—one on the penalty kill and one on a five-six attempt to tie the game with Utah—that spanned over 2:30. The problem was that Nick Suzuki, who had two goals and an assist to break the 400-point barrier, had to play 9:49 of that final period.

Josh Anderson, who has 638 games of NHL experience, had to play 33 percent more than Ivan Demidov and Oliver Kapanen, who have 64 games of NHL experience between them.

Not that the youngster fell short in the end, because Demdov and Kapanen still came together on the ice to score what turned out to be the winning goal.

But Dumidov then pulled it in and fired it past Karel Wijmilka in the 45th^th At the minute of the game, St.Louis had a very small pool of players he could rely on to pull to close out the game.

With Montreal’s schedule only moving forward from this point, more reliable depth will only become more important.

Hey, at least tonight, the Canadiens came out of the game with a win, and for the first time in a long time felt like they had a goaltender who could bail them out.

It had been a while since Jakub Dobes inspired so much confidence, but without him the result would be a blown lead and a crushing loss. The Canadiens gave up 25 scoring chances, and Dobbs smothered most of them.

At five-on-five, in that one-sided second period, he couldn’t stop them all.

Still, the Canadiens allowed Utah to create seven big-threat opportunities and Dobbs was the reason the Mammoths didn’t capitalize on more than two.

Bart Heaton’s power-play marker came 25 feet out to get his team on the board and was a bang-bang play that couldn’t be defended or saved.

The Canadians had created plays to book it so that the mammoth would have every opportunity to bury it. Those were the types of plays this young team made the most of in a recent skid that saw them lose seven of eight games and five in a row before finally showing some maturity in a 5-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday.

Of course Texier will make his debut in Las Vegas on Friday, but the Canadians will need more than his 240 games of experience, which were inserted into their lineup before long.

The Dutchman is out for at least three weeks with a sprained foot. Newhoek is out until at least mid-February after a recent surgery to repair a broken ankle. Lane is out at least after surgery to repair a core ligament, and Gohli’s surgery on a torn accessory ligament will keep him out until at least mid-January.

Hughes was already hitting the market for help before Wednesday’s game at Utah, and that must have been an avenue he felt he should have explored more urgently.