Two or three times a year, Joel Armia pulls you out of those games that make you say “if he could be like this more often”. Games where he is in a state of grace, where he is the best player on the ice, where the virtuosity of his hands aligns with what his head tells him, and where everything seems easy to him.
These matches sometimes come within a one- or two-week streak where he seems to be picking up some interesting cruising speed. Then suddenly, when it’s not an injury that slows down his momentum, Armia falls by himself into a long torpor, leaving us languishing compared to what he could be. Or what it could have been.
Over time, depending on one’s tolerance level, people resign on his case one after another. After all, it’s always been the same with Armia, and there’s no reason to think things could go any other way.
Still, there is a small glimmer of hope that refuses to be extinguished with Armia. It doesn’t always burn very hot, but it’s there.
It’s not that Armia doesn’t have the talent to be the dominant player he was in his hat trick against the Washington Capitals on Thursday. The talent is there. Nor is it that he doesn’t care, or that his heart isn’t in the right place. And it’s certainly not a lack of work either.
In his case, perhaps more than for any Canadiens player, confidence is a continual sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
“I have the impression that too often, I am my worst enemy, admitted the shy Finn. I’m too hard on myself. I have to learn to play in a more relaxed way. I think that’s the big deal. »
We talked a lot about development this season at the Canadian. To develop young players or to develop the hockey IQ of certain veterans so that they broaden their palette to continue to improve.
But Armia poses an almost unique challenge in terms of development for the Canadian, because it is above all a psychological work that must be done with him to manage to find the combination of the safe, and thus access the riches that we only see sporadically so far.
The Canadian has hired performance psychologist Jean-François Ménard this season, and Armia must surely be one of his most complex files. The 29-year-old winger says he worked this season with Ménard on this specific aspect, and he had known for a long time that he had to tackle it.
One of the bases of their exchanges may seem very banal, but it serves as a mantra for Armia.
“As simple as it sounds, you can’t play a perfect game every time, although sometimes that’s what I want,” Armia said. It’s understanding that everyone makes mistakes. »
Armia isn’t missing much as a hockey player. Just the keys are missing.
“With any athlete in any sport, it’s not just about skills, there’s a mental level and a question of confidence,” said head coach Martin St-Louis. There are less good players who have a lot of confidence and there are very good players who have fragile confidence.
“It’s trying to help him. I think we supervise him well – you’re talking about JF (Ménard)… – and we have conversations. »
Armia doesn’t always need to score goals to have a good game. The results help him to put himself in a good mood and chase away the negative, that’s for sure, but the goals are very often the symptom of previous actions with which he is satisfied. 1-on-1 battles he won. Scoring chances he created for his teammates. Completing plays and landing hard shots – he beat Darcy Kuemper with both a devastating wrist shot and a great slap shot – isn’t really the point. It’s often about feeling good enough mentally to be in the right place at the right time.
“When he has his keys in the right places, he is dangerous,” observed St-Louis.
Armia indicated that he wasn’t necessarily looking for a moment or an action, early in the game, to help give him a mental boost. He prefers to go presence by presence and see what the game has in store for him.
But if he makes a mistake? Is this error likely to weigh down the rest of his match?
“Yeah, sure,” he replied. Sometimes yes. »
Well here it is. Armia is one of those players who has been given a state-of-the-art tool chest, but sometimes gets discouraged from opening it and using it. He bangs his head saying he should have done this, he shouldn’t have done that, and the match ends without him being able to solve anything because he was too hard towards himself.
“I’ve always been like that,” he said. I know it’s something I need to improve on. »
During the 2021 playoffs, Armia had participated in this great ride that had become the fourth line of the Canadian. The unit he formed with Eric Staal and Corey Perry had a different identity from the other trios, and even different from the traditional way of playing the Canadian. They were three big attackers who monopolized the time in the opposing zone, without necessarily scoring very often, but by creating a circular movement which worked the opponent in the body relentlessly. Their medicine had proven to be very profitable for the Habs.
A few months later, Staal and Perry had left the organization, but Armia had been rewarded with a generous four-year contract without having the slightest chance, given the manpower the team now had on hand, of recreating this genre. hockey in which he had felt so comfortable.
The following year was terrible, in his own words, and it took the arrival of Martin St-Louis for him to gradually rediscover the pleasure of playing.
As for this season, injuries have constantly placed him in stop/start mode, so he will not have played more than 19 consecutive games. Among other things, he was absent for a month for what the team defined as a respiratory infection, but Armia made it very clear to us that he did not wish to comment on this episode.
Next year, he will pocket $4.8 million. Never has so much money flowed into his bank account in one season. That’s a lot of money for a player who plays on the fourth line when the confidence isn’t there.
But if we compare him to Mike Hoffman, for example, whose contract may also seem cumbersome on the salary structure of the Canadian, Armia at least has this advantage of being able to carry out various small tasks when he is not producing in attack. It doesn’t need to count to be useful. That’s quite an expensive consolation, we agree, and one that probably isn’t enough to make him attractive to other teams. But as long as he has it, the Canadian has no choice but to work to help him maintain high confidence.
No one will be able to do it for Armia himself, not to mention that it’s useless to tell someone “trust me”. That said, St. Louis believes it’s possible for older players to find a solution to this later in their careers.
The Canadiens once had a promising player in Christopher Higgins who was so hard on himself it torpedoed his potential and the career he could have had. But conversely, Mike Matheson’s learning curve on a mental level, between his last seasons in Florida and the often dominant type of hockey you see from him this year in Montreal, is perhaps a good example. to be continued.
Every situation is different, St-Louis recalled, and requires a specific understanding of what each player is going through.
“I’ve been with Army for over a year and I’m in a better position today to help him than I was a year ago, and we have better support to help him,” assured the coach.
If ever this unique case of development were to provide dividends late on – and against all odds, we might add – the Canadian would find himself with a player capable of doing just about anything: capable of being physically dominant, of being able to table on his abilities, contribute effectively to both special teams, and assist the team’s needs on just about any line.
When magical evenings like these happen, the team must feel a renewed desire to try their hand at finding the combinations that will unlock all that potential.
This will be a project to pursue next year.
For now, it’s still a game.
(Photo: Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
