Scott Gomez has been a veritable horror show since the start of the season, and thanks to assistant coach Kirk Muller, he was given a front row seat to see it for himself.

Gomez said after Wednesday night's impressive 4-1 win over the reeling Los Angeles Kings that Muller took him aside a few days ago and showed him exactly what he was doing wrong. It didn't appear to have an effect on him Monday night in Philadelphia, but as coach Jacques Martin correctly pointed out Tuesday, Gomez was far from being the only one in that boat.

But in this game, Gomez was everything Martin had said he wasn't: involved, going to traffic, skating.

The result was not only a well earned assist, but an all around better effort from the team's highest-paid player who certainly hasn't been playing like it of late.

"It's time to get going, I don't know why I'm having a start like this," Gomez said after the game, one of the rare times he's come to speak to reporters this season. "I definitely have to shoot more and take it to the net. Kirkie grabbed me the other day, we had a long talk and he showed me what I was doing. There's no question I was cheating, I was getting away from the puck. It's easy to see what you're doing when you're cheating and thinking a bit too much about offence, and you have to get back to defence."

An interesting side note to Gomez's assist is that he was originally credited with the goal. Replays appeared to show that he never touched the puck, though he should be credited for going to the net and making Jonathan Bernier's a living hell, perhaps even somewhat illegally.

But Michael Cammalleri was extremely impressed with how Gomez immediately owned up to the officials about the scoring error, particularly with the criticism that's been raining down on him unabated over the past few days.

"I said to him, ‘Take it.' But it shows the class of Scott," Cammalleri said. "The goals haven't come easily for him this year and he's being scrutinized for it, yet he came off the ice right away and said, ‘Hey, I didn't touch it. It's your goal.' It shows a pretty classy guy. A lot of people in that situation wouldn't say that."

Gomez said he's not sure why, but he always seems to hit slumps like this.

"It's happened every year except my rookie year," Gomez said. "I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is easy.'"

In fact, last season I looked at every single year of his career and he's right, he's always gone through a rough patch early in the season, it's just never been quite this bad.

However, the one encouraging aspect of it is that historically, Gomez has been a very good second half player, and last season he finished with 41 points over his final 44 games.

If the Canadiens are a 14-7-1 team without his production (and yes, Carey Price is a big part of that), imagine what they could be if Gomez actually got Muller's message and plays the way he did Wednesday night?

Staying on that theme, imagine how good they'll be if Lars Eller continues improving the way he has over the past few games.

I was joking this morning after the Canadiens practice that I feel as though I've become Eller's own personal beat writer with the amount of words I've used to talk about him in this space. But I've done it because I believe he's a special player, one who does things the right way and wants to succeed for the right reasons.

That's why it was hard not to feel happy for him when he got his goal and felt the waves of adulation raining down on him from every corner of the Bell Centre.

Eller spoke a lot about what a relief it was to get the goal, and how he hopes it doesn't take another 20 games to get another (it won't). But this answer is why I like this guy as a player, because he's only 21 and he's already thinking in these terms:

"It was a relief, it was good to get it over with. But there are a lot of things that are more important in my game right now than scoring goals, it's not the first priority. When I do, it's great. But it's not the main thing in my mind right now."

Indeed, Eller is focusing his attention on getting the other aspects of his game in order, and that's where his improvement has come from. Not surprisingly, doing those other things well has led to more scoring opportunities, and it has caught the coach's eye.

"It's nice to see Lars getting rewarded with a goal. He's had several good opportunities so far to get a goal," Martin said. "But his entire play has been improving from game to game, he's really reliable defensively, he battles for pucks, he goes to the net. That should take a load off his shoulder s and he can keep improving his play."

So, while we're talking about imagining, imagine what this team will look like with Lars Eller as a third line centre who can produce on offence and is reliable on defence. Or imagine what this team would like with Scott Gomez as a third line centre.

Either way, I'd say it looks pretty darn good.