Martin St-Louis wanted to attack things in order during camp and the Montreal Canadiens players finally spent some time refining their power play on Monday morning, two days before the start of the regular season.

St. Louis admitted during camp that he hopes the special teams work will help his group win more games this season. Now solely responsible for the power play, following the move of Alex Burrows to a role on the development team, St. Louis has changed the plan to a five-man attack this summer.

His players haven’t had much time so far to try to implement these changes in a game situation, with most of the members of the first wave having only participated in two of the Habs’ six preseason games.

That doesn’t entirely excuse the Canadiens’ 0-for-30 performance on the power play during the preseason. Still, St. Louis isn’t taking a dim view of his team’s struggles so far in that phase of the game.

“In a way, I’m almost happy that we didn’t show anything to the other teams! It’s positive,” St-Louis exclaimed Monday at noon.

“And if our power play had been operating at 30 percent, we’d say it had some success against American League caliber players,” St. Louis added.

The Quebecer nevertheless acknowledged that he might have hoped to have more time to work on the power play.

Unsurprisingly, the first wave consisted of Mike Matheson, Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki, Kirby Dach and Juraj Slafkovsky on Monday. The second wave lost a key player in Patrik Laine, who is sidelined for two to three months with a sprained left knee. It consisted of Lane Hutson, Joel Armia, Brendan Gallagher, Alex Barré-Boulet and Alex Newhook.

“Lane is dynamic up top. ‘Gally’ is in the middle. ‘Army’ can shoot and is smart. Barré-Boulet can make plays. Newhook has speed and can shoot too,” St. Louis listed when reviewing the players playing on the second unit. “There are elements we like, and it’s a matter of seeing what happens when you put it all together.”

“We’re going to continue working on concepts with them. It will take as long as it takes, but they all bring something,” he added.

Players like Josh Anderson, Emil Heineman and Oliver Kapanen are also waiting for their chance to shine in this phase of the game, should St. Louis be dissatisfied with the performance of the units in place for the start of the season.