The Canadiens’ stunning loss to the Penguins exposed a gaping hole on the right side of the blue line

MONTREAL — It’s Sidney Crosby tackling Jayden Struble, a left-handed defenseman forced to play on the right side.

One-on-one against the greatest player of a generation in your 78th year^Th The NHL game is daunting enough, but this is another handicap Struble has to deal with.

Crosby can be seen entering the zone, pushing Struble back and throwing the puck behind him back to Bryan Rust. The damage is already done when Rust sees Richard Rakell alone in front of him and scores the goal that breaks the Montreal Canadiens that night.

That makes the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-2 and discourages the Canadiens so much that Jake Evans comes out after the game and suggests that they might have given up right away.

Considering five more goals hit the net in the next 15 minutes and 20 seconds without much resistance, we won’t argue with him.

It was a 9-2 loss for the Canadiens, a terrible disappointment. An inexplicable result for a team that had played well enough to give itself a chance to close out those five games at home with four wins and some momentum in Winnipeg for a big Hockey Night in Canada matchup against the NHL-leading Jets to take with you on Saturday.

Broadly speaking, you attribute it to the same immaturity that has plagued the league’s second-youngest team since the start of the season.

The Canadiens have now lost 11 of 29 games by more than three goals, with their unparalleled ability to turn a minor bleed into a major bleed dominating the action in every game.

A goal is scored and it feels like two more are on the way, so Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis talks about “the chain falling off” and assistant captain Brendan Gallagher says what everyone who Watching this team, you have to think at this point.

“They say we have to learn from this. That’s what we do,” said Gallagher angrily. “But at some point you can only say it for so long. You have to go out and take action as a group. Just disappointing.”

It’s also so damn monotonous.

So let’s zoom out of the big and zoom in on the small.

Let’s go back to that game-winning fourth goal – and the three goals the Penguins scored before it – because it exposed a problem the Canadiens have no solution to.

The team has a gaping hole on the right side of its defense.

It’s been that way all season, but things got worse when David Savard missed warmups and was sidelined Thursday with an upper-body injury.

He is the Canadiens’ only reliable and trustworthy right-back.

It was clear at the end of the night when the stats revealed that Justin Barron – the only right-handed defenseman in the Canadiens’ lineup on Thursday – played just 12:21 against the Penguins. As was clear before the Canadiens completely lost their temper in the third period.

Before Struble gave Crosby the space to start the play on Rakell’s goal, Mike Matheson made his third of three errors that led to the Penguins’ goals.

The speedy left-hander made each of them from the right side.

The first was a penalty kill by the Canadiens, with Matheson in the spot Savard normally occupies. He was positioned so that he had to turn 180 degrees to his backhand side to block the passing lane vacated by the Penguins, and he was caught watching it all unfold.

On the second goal, Matheson made a complex play at the offensive blue line that is best avoided as a left-handed player playing on the right side, and then he was able to continue play from the right side of his own blue line to the goal line. That doesn’t stop Rust from driving around him and hitting him into the net.

And on the third play, Matheson opted for an easier play from his offside — a bench toward the boards for an attempted zone exit — rather than a harder but better play that would have forced him to take the puck backhand and drive vice versa to the right side of the ice, where there was more space.

It came back to the Canadiens and ended up in their net.

Kaiden Guhle, a left-handed hitter who has played on the right side for more than half the season, had trouble playing from his offside for Pittsburgh’s seventh and eighth goals. Just as Struble was fouled on Pittsburgh’s sixth and ninth goals.

“It’s definitely easier on the strong side,” he said, “but you have to do it on the offside.”

He does it, Guhle does it and even Matheson does it when Savard is out.

“It’s definitely not ideal, it’s not easy, it’s just what we’re dealing with right now,” St. Louis said. “We are not the only team. For example, tonight they had a pair of two lefties. It’s not ideal, but we’re trying to work with it.”

Savard is only listed as day-to-day, so he’ll come back soon enough and make it one less Canadiens defenseman playing out of position.

But they will continue to have to deal with this for the foreseeable future.

Hopefully, in the long term, Logan Mailloux and David Reinbacher can offer solutions. But for now, it’s difficult for the Canadiens to find a stopgap solution while the former continues to develop his game in Laval and the latter recovers from knee surgery.

General manager Kent Hughes has been trying since the start of the season. But if it were easy to find a stable right-hander who was available and not under contract for too long, one would already be here.

In the meantime, there won’t be much attention on Hughes strengthening the Canadiens between now and the March 7 trade deadline – especially after games like these – and there will be those clamoring for him to trade Savard, who the last season of his contract is playing.

The 34-year-old isn’t exactly having a great season. He would need to improve his game significantly to provide the Canadiens with any value in the market.

But his value to her becomes most evident that evening.

“It hurts not having Savy,” St. Louis said. “Not just because he is a right-winger, but also because of his presence.”

It’s a stabilizer the Canadiens could have used in this third period.

“He is an experienced player who has been playing in this league for a long time,” said Guhle. “He is calm, he is composed, he always has the right things to say to the young people, to the whole group. He stays calm, but at the same time he concentrates. If he’s out, it’s up to us to act.” Stand up and fill this space.

No one was able to do that against the Penguins, which led to the ugliness we saw in the final stages of the game.

“We were all just confused,” Evans said. “It’s like we just stopped playing altogether, so it’s embarrassing and frustrating.”