Young Canadiens are dominating at 5-on-5, and that takes some getting used to New York Times (Online) Arpon Basu It can sometimes be difficult, nine games into a season that began with so much promise, to see the forest for the trees. The Montreal Canadiens are coming off a run to the Eastern Conference final, but they remain tied as the fourth-youngest team in the league with the Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks. The Sharks stole a 4-3 win from the Canadiens at the Bell Centre on Tuesday night, thanks to poor puck management, an inability to separate while dominating, and silly, poorly timed penalties. Those are all hallmarks of a young team, and the hope coming into this season was that the experience gained in that playoff run would mitigate that youth to some extent. The Canadiens also have young players with a lot of experience, such as Juraj Slafkovský, who, at age 22, played his 291st career regular-season game Tuesday. When you add in the playoffs, he's at 315. Lane Hutson is at 199 regular-season and playoff games at age 22. Zachary Bolduc is at 210 combined games at age 23. This is why the most common reaction from Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis after games this season has been a shrug. In most cases, his team should have run away with the game based on how it played, and immature mistakes wound up costing his team a regulation win or, as was the case Tuesday, a win altogether. Because really, what's the difference between what happened Tuesday night against the Sharks and what happened Saturday night against the Buffalo Sabres? The Canadiens led both games 3-1; in overtime against the Sabres, the Canadiens allowed a three-on-one break that turned into a missed shot that sprung Cole Caufield for a game-winning breakaway, and the Mr. Saturday Night legend grew a tiny bit more. Had the Sabres scored on that three-on-one, no one would be talking about Mr. Saturday Night. The Sharks scored in overtime Tuesday after Jakub Dobeš took a needless interference penalty. You can argue whether that should have been called, but Dobeš left the blue paint to get an arm on Sharks forward Collin Graf as he was trying to get on the forecheck. Was it a soft call in that situation? Maybe. But one thing St. Louis has been repeating all season is that the most penalized team in the league — and the Canadiens have a league-high 46 minor penalties against in nine games — can't give the officials an excuse to raise their hand and blow the whistle. That's what Dobeš did, and that came after Arber Xhekaj did the same by dropping his gloves with Michael Kesselring in the third period, allowing the Sharks to tie the score to begin with. The common thread in the Canadiens' inability to hold on to leads has been a lack of maturity, failing to understand situational play and how to close out games, whether that's early when you're carrying play but the score remains close; or late, when the score is still close, but you're leading and can see the finish line and need to manage the game to get across it. This is when unforced errors hurt the most. “There's no pills you can take; there's no magic potion. Winning takes what it takes,” St. Louis said after Tuesday's game. “When you're up two (goals) in the third, the way you're playing, this game should be over. And I think we need to understand the score of the game and what we need at that time — and what we don't need. Very simple.” These problems seem fixable. They come with being accustomed to situations where you are vastly outplaying teams — dominating them even — and you haven't been rewarded for it on the scoreboard. That can be difficult mentally, but it is something good NHL teams need to learn how to manage, and the Canadiens are clearly still learning that. Because the reality is they haven't been in these situations often, largely because their five-on-five game has not been this dominant the entire time St. Louis has been the coach. Here are just a few of the five-on-five numbers that demonstrate this, knowing that last season's numbers are after 82 games and this season's are after nine, so there's a lot more noise in this season's data on shot attempts against (CA/60), shots on goal against (SA/60), expected goals against (XGA/60) and high-danger chances against (HDCA/60) through Tuesday night's games, courtesy of Natural Stat Trick. There is a lot to build on there, and much of the work the Canadiens did in training camp was based on improving those numbers. They essentially went from the bottom third of the league to the top third in most of those metrics, albeit in a small sample. What is ailing the Canadiens is fixable, and in some ways, a result like Tuesday's can help fix them. They got away with doing these things in a shootout win and an overtime win against the Sabres. Regulation losses to the Nashville Predators and Washington Capitals and Tuesday's loss in overtime never should have gotten to the point where the game was in doubt in the third period. In Washington, the main issue was goaltending, but against Nashville and San Jose, it was self-inflicted wounds. If the Canadiens continue dominating five-on-five play the way they have in most of their games, though, they will learn how to manage the feeling of dominating a game you are not dominating on the scoreboard. It happens; it just hasn't happened to the Canadiens all that often. Resisting the urge to make a difference late in the game, as opposed to simply continuing what has worked, is part of the maturing process for a young team looking to ascend. From a big-picture perspective, the Canadiens are trending well. St. Louis often says doing the right things on the ice does not guarantee success; it just improves your percentages. His young team needs to get comfortable with that notion.