New Canadiens Connection: Seven Questions

On Saturday night, the Montreal Canadiens needed extra time once again to defeat the Buffalo Sabres 4-3. Cole Caufield scored his second goal of the game just 54 seconds into overtime to send Bell Centre fans home happy. The victory temporarily distracted Habs fans from any chatter about a goalie controversy and other questions.

If you’ve been following the conversation around the Canadiens over the past week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this team’s biggest problem is pretty obvious: the goaltending. More specifically, Jakub Dobes.

The narrative seems to be that Montreal is dominating games, doing just about everything right, and somehow finding ways to lose because the goaltending isn’t good enough. When you see how much attention the subject is getting, it’s tempting to think the case is closed.

But is it? Because when you look at the Canadiens’ first seven games, there are some rather inconvenient questions worth asking. In fact, we’ve got at least seven very important questions we’d like to ask. And they’d probably make those promoting that narrative squirm in their chairs a little bit.

And that’s not to say that we’re going to toot the “there’s nothing wrong with the goaltending” horn, but there’s a difference between saying it’s part of the problem and deciding it’s the only problem.

Perhaps we should all take a step back and ponder why the conversation in Montreal has become so focused on the crease, blatantly overlooking some much bigger issues with this team.

This Week’s Show

On this week’s episode of the Canadiens Connection podcast, we step back from the noise, challenge a few assumptions, and ask some questions that might not fit quite so neatly into the prevailing narrative. Because if we’re going to figure out what’s really going wrong with the Canadiens, we need to look at the whole picture, not just the guy between the pipes.

NEW PODCAST: Montreal Canadiens’ Goaltending Problem: Missing the Bigger Picture? | Canadiens Connection ep 422

We also discussed these important topics on this week’s episode of the podcast:

Who is the Canadiens first star this week, and who is trending down?
Where will a Habs future top-six player be playing over the holidays?
Which Canadiens prospect is surprisingly turning heads in the AHL?

CC Question of the Week: Are your expectations for the Canadiens changing after their first seven games, or do you still believe the Canadiens can meet the expectations most fans/pundits had entering the season?

It is our ninth season, with a new episode of the podcast dropping every Saturday afternoon. Be sure to subscribe using your favorite podcast app. Or watch our episodes on YouTube.