Canadiens Flaws Catching Up To Them

When the Montreal Canadiens started the season with a 7-3 record, it was quite easy to get swayed away by the great results, amazing plays and obvious talent showed on the ice. After all, who’s gonna blame fans for being ecstatic about their rebuilding team winning on a regular basis? Who cares if these wins came in overtime… after losing a lead…. or a bad start… or because the backup goaltender played like the ghost of Ken Dryden helped him out.

Fact is, as we mentioned on this blog before, Montreal now has enough talent to overcome most of these problems any given night in a way that reminds me of the Maple Leafs early on in the Auston Matthews era. They’d play an imperfect game but more often than not had enough firepower to score timely goals to pull out a victory.

Despite the thrills these performances bring, they are unfortunately not the best recipe for long term success over the course of a long 82 games season. In the past two weeks, Montreal’s flaws resurfaced and their record over the past 10 games is more representative of their actual worth in my humble opinion. They are not yet a team that should challenge for the division or the Stanley cup, but I am convinced they are a team good enough to be in the playoffs once again.

It will be interesting to see how the team responds to their first slump of the season. These happen to every team, but it’s the good ones that find a way to bounce back to winning consistantly.

Newhook’s injury will impose line shuffling

Seeing Alex Newhook crash into the boards with his leg “bending it like Beckham” the wrong way was tough to see. Newhook was on his way to have the best season of his career and looked like an excellent fit next to rookies Ivan Demidov and Oliver Kapanen. What is now confirmed as a long term injury (4 months) will force Martin St-Louis to shuffle his offensive line, which might come at an opportune time considering the team’s first pointless losing streak of the season.

Speculations didn’t last long as St-Louis sent out these combinations at practice this morning:

• First Line: Cole Caufield – Nick Suzuki – Juraj Slafkovsky
• Second Line: Kirby Dach- Oliver Kapanen – Ivan Demidov
• Third Line: Zachary Bolduc – Jake Evans – Josh Anderson
• Fourth Line: Jared Davidson – Joe Veleno – Brendan Gallagher 

Personally, I would have liked to see Bolduc get a chance alongside Demidov. After an interesting start to his season, Bolduc has gone without a shot on goal the last two games and his impressive release would be a nice fit with Demidov’s passing abilities. We have yet to see a Bolduc-Dach-Demidov line despite it probably being the closest we could have to an actual 2nd line in the NHL. At the same time, I do feel Kapanen’s effectiveness would drop significantly away from Demidov and St-Louis probably wants to keep that working combination going.

As for the newly recalled Jared Davidson, I actually thought he was deserving of a callup last season so I’m glad he’s finally getting his first chance in the NHL. Davidson is an intense player that often goes to the dirty areas and usually gets a few good scoring chances because of it. Should be interesting to watch him go despite being on an offensively challenged line as Veleno is still looking for his first point as a Montreal Canadiens and Gallagher only has 2 assists in his last 10 games. As long as they send the puck and manage to spend time in the offensive zone with good forecheck, they should do just fine as the team’s 4th line.

Guhle’s injury raises Matheson’s importance

While everyone agrees Kaiden Guhle is an important part of the Canadiens defensive unit, the amount of times he spends on the injury lists does raise the question of how much the team can rely on him as a long term contributor in their top 4 on defense. In my opinion, it also increases the importance Mike Matheson, who’s been an amazing player ever since joining the team.

As he plays the last season of his contract, it becomes more and more obvious resigning the hometown player should be a very high priority on Kent Hughes’s work list. I’m sure management is hoping Matheson signs another “team friendly” deal after managing to do it with other core players like of Hutson, Caufield and Slafkovsky but I feel term will be a bigger challenge than the actual amount per season.

Matheson is now 31 years old and anything longer than 5 years is a much bigger risk for the team to see his play fall off as you usually see with over 35 years old defensemen. On the other hand, Matheson is likely signing the biggest contract of his career and it would be very understandable for him to try and get as much as he can.

There’s also the fact that Matheson went from an offensive role two years ago, posting an impressive 62 points season in 2023-2024, to a more defensive role on the team. While it’s a role he has accepted with incredible professionalism, it’s also obvious he could once again quarterback a powerplay elsewhere in the league.

I for one hope Matheson sticks around. It’s pretty rare you have a local player having such an important role with the team and with Guhle’s injury, it has become even more important not to lose him.

Montreal will look to bounce back tonight against the red hot Boston Bruins. It’s fun to see both the Bruins and Montreal at the top of the standings as they look to rekindle their century old rivalry playing meaningful, competitive games against each other.

Thank you all for reading and have a great day!