Why Your Team Sucks: Montreal Canadiens
2021 SEASON:
First, let’s get this out of the way: I am a Leafs fan. This is always my second favourite entry to write, next to that of my own stupid team. My favourite team choked away an easy 3–1 series lead. I should have been posting this entry like two weeks ago, and it is entirely their fault that I’m not. I hate my team and will never forgive them.
Now: to the executive summary! The Montreal Canadiens are giant frauds and their Cinderella run proved nothing more than that postseason hockey- and how it is officiated- is completely broken beyond repair.
The Habs lost more games than they won in the regular season. Hell, they lost more games than they won even if you include their playoff run. They had one more win than the Ottawa Senators, a team that could best be described as “a team that plays in the NHL.” The Flames had more wins than they did. The Rangers and Stars were higher in the overall standings- in tougher divisions, I might add- despite missing the playoffs.
The Habs made the playoffs practically by default. The Canucks went something like 1–10 against them and then the entire team went and got COVID. The Flames biggest strength all season was Darryl Sutter scowling at them. The Habs lost enough games late in the season to give either team a chance to catch up and they just didn’t win the games. They didn’t even back into a playoff spot; they got towed into it.
Now, the postseason. Montreal deserves exactly zero credit for their first round win. They did not win that series. The Leafs lost that series because they are absolutely awful choke artists who have elevated peeing themselves when it matters most into an art form. The Habs were just in the right place at the right time. All you have to do is show up and put skates on. Your grandma could singlehandedly beat the Leafs in a Game 7.
The Habs then went on to play the Jets, another team that sucked but lucked into making the postseason by playing in the I’m Out Of Demeaning Names For This Division, Presented By Wendy’s. The Habs also had the benefit of one of Winnipeg’s top-six forwards getting himself suspended after going more berserk than a Habs fan when Chris Cuthbert says that Auston Matthews is a good goal scorer. Again, another slam dunk.
Their first real challenge came against Vegas, and that should’ve been the end of the road for Montreal had Marc-Andre Fleury not handed his childhood team the series on a silver- er, golden?- platter. This was also the series most notable for Habs fans whining that the refs were out to get them for not calling any penalties on Vegas. I’ve never seen a group of people complain so much about a system that is designed to benefit them, and that’s saying a lot in a year where scores of business owners have cried about the free market keeping potential employees from accepting poverty wages.
The Cup dream finally ended at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning in five short games. That one win came when they were already down 3–0 in the series. I firmly believe that the Lightning just threw that game so they could win the Cup on home ice, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.
Naturally, the fanbase that makes St. Louis Cardinals fans look self-aware and level-headed handled the loss with composure and dignity. I’m kidding. They insisted that the Lightning were cheaters for keeping their best player out of the lineup all season in what was a perfectly legal move. They then lamented the classlessness and dignity of being mildly trolled by Nikita Kucherov, which really just proved his point. Habs fans have the sense of humour of a corporate HR department.
HEAD COACH:
Dominique Ducharme, the former interim future ex-coach of the Montreal Canadiens. The Cup run cemented his long-term job security that was already pretty established, considering he met the Habs’ usual criteria of being able to speak French and scowl into the abyss. Ducharme looks like if Guy Fieri dressed up as Draco Malfoy for Halloween and freebased a bunch of Red Bull. He probably spent his summer preparing for the season by screaming at his own family while wearing an N95 on his chin.
Alex Burrows is one of Ducharme’s assistant coaches, tasked with running their powerplay. I don’t know what powerplay systems he could teach except to fall down like a Vaudeville actor slipping on a banana peel. Man, he must love Josh Anderson.
NEW THINGS THAT SUCK:
News came out after the Cup Final that Shea Weber has apparently spent the last two seasons with his limbs being operated by a series of intricate ropes and pullies. His playing days are pretty much over. The intrigue isn’t if he’s done, but what team will end up trading for his cap hit and when. I’ve got even money on the Houston Coyotes in 2023, for what it’s worth.
The Habs built up two months of goodwill during their Cup run and took only two weeks to blow the whole thing up with an M16 by drafting Logan Mailloux. All they had to do was draft a player- literally any player- other than the recent sex offender that multiple teams had refused to draft and who actively told teams not to pick him. Marc Bergevin could’ve said “lol we select YOUR MOM” and started breakdancing, and it would’ve been a better use of the pick.
That of course brought an abrupt end to some Habs fans spending the last two years subsisting on a regular diet of supposed moral superiority on account of Auston Matthews’ legal issues in 2019. Never mind that the Habs already acquired a player in Max Domi with a record of saying stuff that would’ve been right at home on a 1999 episode of Coach’s Corner. Never mind that they handwaved Andrew Shaw yelling a homophobic slur two months after it happened when the only thing that had changed about him was the logo on his jersey. This was what it took for much of this fanbase to learn the lesson that their team is, in fact, no better than anyone else’s. The unfortunate price of a moral backbone is being unable to bend far enough to inhale your own farts.
The Habs became the first team to lose a player via offer sheet in 14 years, letting Jesperi Kotkaniemi walk to the Canes. They probably made the right call, but were screwed no matter which option they chose. All of this because they just had to offer sheet a player who never had any intention of playing for the Habs but just wanted his own team to sign him faster.
The Habs lost shutdown centre Philip Danault, who was the main reason they made the Cup Final. They used that money to sign one-dimensional winger Mike Hoffman to a multi-year deal because they’re apparently trying to do an opposites thing now. They signed Cedric Paquette, Matthieu Perreault, and David Savard, because the offseason proved that the Habs value French-sounding names over wins and morals.
THINGS THAT STILL SUCK:
I’ll readily admit that I was bitter and salty, both at the Habs’ Cup run and at the stupid choke artists I cheer for that perpetuated the entire thing by doing what they do best. While it was still ongoing, I felt as though the universe had aligned to spite me for some specific wrong. June was a rough month.
Of course, now I look upon all of that with laughter because the Habs didn’t win. They reached their mountaintop and still lost in the end. And that’s as good as it’s going to get for them. Now it’s back to the Atlantic Division; back to playing the likes of the Bruins, Panthers, Leafs (the regular season edition that doesn’t self-immolate), and of course, the same Lightning team that opened a can of whoopass on them on and off the ice this past July. There’s a strong glass ceiling coming over Montreal’s head, and it’s called “fifth place in the division.” The 2021 Habs are just the Canadian Dallas Stars, resigned to suffering the same fate as when they lost Corey Perry. That team will forever go down in history as little more than an Original Six iteration of the 2012 New Jersey Devils that won one fewer game.
I’ve been saying for years that Habs fans have a hilariously irrational belief that the league and media alike are out to get them, and you know what? I was right. For all their caterwauling about some vast conspiracy being hatched against the third-wealthiest and second-most popular team in the NHL, they objectively benefitted greatly from the same prison rules postseason officiating over which they complained. The national media not only carried enough water for the Habs to fill the St. Lawrence River, but went so far as to lobby the NHL to expand the postseason specifically to accommodate them. I sat through two months of every Hockey Night in Canada commentator acting as though it was my patriotic duty to cheer for Montreal while simultaneously being told by their fans that those same commentators actually hated them because they said that the Habs got scored on when they did. Is there a word in French for “gaslighting?”
Well, no longer. Philip Danault isn’t around to shut star players down anymore. Shea Weber is done. They’re one injury away from playing a Telefrancais character at centre. You had your moment in the sun, and now the karmic bill is due. Vous detestez le voir!
REASONS FOR OPTIMISM:
If they sneak into the second wildcard again, they could play the Leafs and restart this whole process again, only without Tampa in the Cup Final to stop them. I need a Tums.
