The Canadiens did not get robbed by Winnipeg, they gave it away

Winnipeg gets the headlines, and Kyle Connor earned his. But a team does not come back from four goals down with three minutes left unless the other team helps, and the Montreal Canadiens helped for the length of a long commercial break. The 5-4 overtime loss belongs to Montreal's bench as much as to the Jets' shooters.

Two minutes and six seconds

Tyrel Bauer scored his first NHL goal. Morgan Barron made it 4-2. Connor scored twice, the two goals 27 seconds apart. All four Jets goals in regulation took 2:06 of game time. Nothing in that stretch looked like a team adjusting. A coach with a 4-0 lead has one job, which is to burn the clock and keep the puck out of the slot, and Montreal did neither.

The Kings held the old record for a four-goal comeback, against Dallas on Nov. 10, 2007. That game started its run earlier on the clock. Winnipeg needed less time and less room, and Montreal gave both away.

The penalty that sealed it

With about 35 seconds left, Alexandre Carrier tripped Cole Perfetti off a faceoff. Barron had won the draw. A defenceman who knows the score is 4-3 and the other team has an extra attacker takes the body or ices the puck. He does not put a team on the power play. Connor tied it on that man advantage, and Samberg finished it at 3:30 of overtime.

Ask the questions the standings will not answer. Who was on the ice for the first three goals? Did the lines change once Bauer scored? Was a timeout worth taking to stop the bleeding? Montreal has to answer those in the video room, because the box score cannot.

The goalie did his part

Jacob Fowler stopped 42 of 47 shots. Stuart Skinner made 18 saves at the other end. Montreal's goalie did not lose this game. Skaters who let a goalie face that volume, then sit through a six-on-five push, lost it.

Martin St. Louis was honest afterward. "You look at that game, we were winning but we weren't beating them," he said. He also said the Canadiens "got what we deserved." That reads like a coach who saw the problem before the third period, which makes the late management harder to defend, not easier.

The record hides it

Montreal is 9-3-3 with a point in eight straight games. That run is real, and it is why this loss will get filed as a bad night. It should not be. A team that can hold a four-goal lead for 57 minutes and lose it in two has a closing problem that a good start to the season covers up. Good teams survive one bad shift. Montreal could not survive five goals in a row, and no one on the bench found a way to make it stop.