New reality coming at Canadiens fast
Team that looked like an offensive juggernaut last week suddenly seems toothless
So there are seven teams in the North Division of the NHL. The Ottawa Senators have already played themselves out of a playoff position, which most figured was going to be the case.
Vancouver is doing its level best to join Ottawa on the sidelines early. The Canucks, winners of only three games this season when the Senators aren’t the opponent, will need to play .600 hockey or better the rest of the way to qualify for a post-season spot.
That leaves the other five North teams, four of which will make the playoffs. That certainly gives the group a CFL West Division feel to it. Most everybody makes the playoffs.
Given these circumstances in the all-Canadian sector, it seems a stretch to imagine a must-win game at this point of the NHL’s COVID season.
So why does it feel that way for the Montreal Canadiens heading into Toronto on Saturday? Wasn’t it just a few nights ago that the Habs hosted the Leafs in what was billed as a Battle of the Titans?
Well, things change fast in the NHL these days. One moment the Devils are looking improved, the next they have 16 players on the COVID-ineligible list. One moment Patrik Laine is looking forward to getting out of Manitoba and becoming a Blue Jacket, the next moment he’s cussing out a member of the team’s coaching staff.
Things happen quickly in Gary Bettman’s world these days. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.
So it’s true that, on Wednesday, the Canadiens were the NHL’s highest-scoring team going into their second meeting of the season against Toronto. That was after an unimpressive two-game set against the Senators in which each team won a game and both teams scored a total of four goals.
There was no panic in Habsville after those games because, well, these things happen. The Senators had beaten the Maple Leafs earlier this season as well. Every once in a while a blind squirrel finds a nut and all that.
Then the Canadiens turned a one-goal first period lead into a 4-2 defeat to Toronto at home on Wednesday, and suddenly it was two losses in three games with six goals scored for Montreal. The unstoppable offence that had exploded for 17 goals in a three-game visit to the West Coast in January was drying up.
Then came Thursday night. COVID concerns for Oilers winger Jesse Puljujarvi pushed the start time between Edmonton and Montreal back an hour, and that seemed to completely throw the Canadiens off their game. This time, they couldn’t score at all in a 3-0 loss.
Suddenly, the Oilers were tied in the standings with the Canadiens. The narrative had changed dramatically in Montreal over just 48 hours.
But it was more than that. With GM Marc Bergevin having made a series of changes over the off-season, this was supposed to be a very different Montreal team, a team that could score and play creative hockey in a way that hadn’t been the case with this club for more than a decade.
Over the past 10 seasons, the Canadiens have been among the top 10 NHL offensive teams just once. Five times they were in the bottom third of the league in scoring. It’s been this way around Montreal for a long, long time. This is a franchise that hasn’t had a player in the NHL’s top 10 in scoring since Mats Naslund in the 1985-86 season.
Last season, Montreal was 19th in NHL scoring, and Bergevin set out to change that. Max Domi was moved out, Josh Anderson and Tyler Toffoli were brought in, as was flashy rookie Russian blueliner Alexander Romanov. An explosion of offence followed. One Montreal scribe suggested the Canadiens had so much scoring depth it qualified as the team’s “superpower.”
With that superpower rolling in Kryptonite over the past week, it has been a blow to the belief that, after years of managing the team rather poorly, Bergevin and his spectacular classic rock hairstyle had finally figured it out. Ditto for the hope that the Canadiens could become a consistently good scoring team again, something like Tampa Bay, Washington or Colorado.
Which bring us back to the must-win situation in Toronto on Saturday. The Canadiens need a victory to avoid letting the Leafs put too much distance between the two teams in the standings, and they also need to put a few pucks past Freddie Andersen to demonstrate the scoring problems of the past week are just a shortterm problem that all teams confront.
This is a game that’s very much about Montreal’s new identity. Getting some goals out of players like Jonathan Drouin (one goal), Phillip Danault (none) or Jesperi Kotkaniemi (one) would be most helpful.
It’s improbable that both Toffoli and Anderson will continue to score at better than a 50-goal pace and there isn’t an established 40-goal shooter on the team. It’s nearly impossible to acquire those types of players when you refuse to do a comprehensive rebuild because you’re always in a winnow mode because of longterm commitments to Carey Price and Shea Weber.
“We must be able to avoid panicking and try to rebound instead,” Montreal head coach Claude Julien said Friday. “We want our group to showcase resilience. We want to get back to our good habits and the style of play we showed to start the season.”
Barring an 18-wheeler-overthe-cliff collapse, the Canadiens should be in the postseason. But will they get there as one of the top seeds in the North and as a high-octane offensive squad?
Don’t blink. The answers are just a couple of months away.