The Montreal Canadiens were never good
The city of Montreal erupted into panic when the Montreal Canadiens were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs by the New York Rangers in game six of the opening round of the NHL playoffs.
The day following the game, local radio station TSN 690 opened the phone lines so fans could voice their opinions and hot takes on what had just happened. After all, the team finished first in their division, and after a five-year plan from general manager Marc Bergevin that hoped to see the Habs become a cup contender at the end of the five years, expectations were high. However, instead of rational responses to what had just happened, the discourse around the team devolved into a disgraceful showing of stupidity and overreaction.
For example, Sean Coleman tweeted out on the Sunday morning of Apr. 23, that almost every caller said that the team should trade Carey Price for a player that can score. Fans also suggested trading Max Pacioretty and making Charlie Lindgren, the starting goalie for the Habs farm team, the starter in Montreal.
Aren’t Habs fans just the best?
But honestly, before the team trades away the best goalie in the league, or the second best even-strength goal scorer over the last three NHL season, (and yes I’m talking about Pacioretty) it’s important to realize that perhaps this team was never that good to begin with. Maybe these expectations that were forced upon this team were too high. After all, the team plays in the Atlantic division, which is arguably one of the weakest divisions in the league.
Just by dissecting this year’s season, and the team’s week-to-week performance, it is obvious that the team’s playoffs woes have nothing to do with Price. Obviously Pacioretty’s lack of scoring in the playoffs was an issue, but the team’s problems run much deeper than that. The core of the team is broken.
Fans and pundits alike had the Canadiens as cup contenders after their 9–0–1 start to the season. At that time, the team wasn’t putting up crazy offensive numbers, but they were still averaging around three points a game and were getting Vezina trophy quality goaltending from Price.
The team’s 11th game of the season is where things started to go sour. In a match against the Columbus Blue Jackets, a team the Habs have always struggled with, they lost 10–0. Head coach Michel Therrien left back-up goaltender Al Montoya in nets for all 10 goals and single-handedly turned the veteran netminder into the laughing stock of the night’s highlights. Montoya never really got his confidence back and while he may not have realized it, the incident spelled the beginning of the end of Therrien’s time in Montreal.
While the team played well following that game, as the season wore on into December and January, the team played horrific hockey. Aside from Pacioretty and Montreal’s new favourite player Alex Radulov, the team struggled to muster any offense. Phillip Danault, a player that surprised the league with his offensive play early in the season, found his way to the top line. However, Danault ultimately struggled down the stretch and proved why he should never have been on the top line in the first place.
Then there is Alex Galchenyuk. Galchenyuk was touted to be the team’s big center this year. The league knew he could score, he just needed a chance. One problem though: He can’t win face-offs. This led the coaching staff to play him at different positions, with varying degrees of success.
The team also had a third and fourth line full of grinders that could not muster any offense. At the trade deadline, instead of addressing the team’s need for a scorer, Bergevin went after even more grinders and traded for Steve Ott, Dwight King and Andreas Martinsen. These guys cycled in between the fourth line and being healthy scratches on a night-to-night basis. If fans thought that these guys would make a positive change to the team, they were wrong.
On the back end, players like Alexei Emelin and Nathan Beaulieu played far below their potential, both of them causing multiple turnovers and leading to goals against.
Just by looking at the team’s roster, it’s obvious that this team was always just average. They were a fairly middle of the road for a team that finished first in its division.
Another indicator of how average the team was their stretch throughout the middle of the season. From January to February, the team had one of the worst records in the NHL, as the team could not score, and Price was playing some of the worst hockey of his career. Saves he had always made with ease were becoming weak goals that were not only demoralizing, but head-scratching.
Eventually, Therrien was fired, Claude Julien was hired, and the Habs, along with Price were rejuvenated. The team went on a seven game win streak and fans thought the team was back to their Stanley Cup contender ways. However, what the fanbase and the media (myself included) failed to realize was that most teams play well after hiring a new coach.
I like to call it the “new coach placebo effect.” This is when a bad team hires a new coach and they start to play well for a stretch of ten or more games, but after a while, they become exposed and fall back into their losing ways. In the Habs case, after winning those seven games in a row, the team started to struggle scoring again and while Price continued to play well, the team just couldn’t keep up.
This trend followed the team into the playoffs and they were eventually bounced from the first round in six games, when most hockey pundits had them going to the Eastern Conference Final.
The Habs’ early exit is a cautionary tale of how wrong it is for management to assume the team is fine based on streaks. Sure the team had a great start and a decent stretch of hockey with Julien, but the teams play in-between all of that was telling us that this team is not that good. A team that finished 15th in goal scoring, averaging 2.72 goals per game is not going to go far in the playoffs. None of us really paid attention to what was happening and that is why most of us were shocked when the clock at Madison Square Garden hit zero and the Habs were out of the playoffs.
If we had all just taken our “fan blinders” off and paid careful attention to this team, maybe our expectations wouldn’t have been so high. It’s just a shame that after five years, Bergevin’s plan to make the team a contender has been an utter failure.
Cole’s Corner is a sports column written by Alex Cole published every Monday by The Pitchwriter. Follow us to receive our stories every day in your inbox.
