Last night, Stu Cowan from The Gazelle made a post about the Montreal Canadiens’ record after 21 games in the three years of their rebuild and it got some people wound up.
In 2022, they had a 11-9-1 record for 23 points, in 2023 their record stood at 9-10-2 and 20 points while this year, in year three of the rebuild, they are 7-11-3 with 17 points. Clearly the record is not improving over the years, but this isn’t all that surprising.
Since Kent Hughes took over as GM, he had to take the team apart to build it back up. As a result, veterans like Tyler Toffoli, Artturi Lehkonen, Jeff Petry, Joel Edmundson, Sean Monahan and Jake Allen were sent packing. While it’s the normal course of action, stripping your team from all those experienced players isn’t great for stability.
As you go from a balanced team of experienced players and youngster to a younger roster, it’s not surprising to be losing games and end up with a struggling team. As the youngster gain in experience though, the results will start trending up, the problem is though, the Canadiens are not there yet.
It’s frustrating for the fans, especially since the organization stated it wanted to be in the mix this season and play meaningful hockey for longer this year, but 21 games in, it has to be said the declaration was miscalculated.
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Perhaps the Habs brass hoped to motivate its young core by saying that, or it hoped that Patrik Laine’s arrival would have such an impact on the top six that Montreal would finally have two real offensive lines at the top of its lineup. Unfortunately though, the Canadiens haven’t had the chance to see what Laine could bring with the injury he suffered in pre-season.
Let’s be clear though, Laine won’t return to save the day. He hasn’t played much hockey in the last few years and it’s hard to hit the ground running in such circumstance, as evidenced by Kirby Dach’s play so far.
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Not to quote Larry David, but Canadiens’ fans would do well to curb their enthusiasm or the rest of the season could feel like a long and winding road. Until Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky and Cole Caufield are ready to take that next step, there won’t be that much progression in Montreal and that’s not shocking. Along with Kaiden Guhle, they are the established core of this team.
They jury is still out on Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook. Hughes acquired them in the hope that they would be part of his young core, but he signed them to “show me” deals and not to long-term contracts. Right about now, those signings look great as neither have lived up to the GM’s expectations.
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