As a long time die hard Habs fan I must say I’m nearly at my last straw with this organization. Finally after the Canadians have been a team meddling in between mediocrity for the past 25 years with a couple of runs of some bad teams making a run, relying on goalies to stand on their heads (Halak,Price) and the canadiens to generate scoring chances of odd man rushes and get completely dominated on 5on5. I thought after Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughs said this team isn’t about winning and only about developing our players and prospects. I finally felt like we are going to finally build a team the correct way like how the other teams who contend for cups every year in NHL did it with patients, development and good coaching.
Now I know this is a bit of a overreaction being that we are only 4 games in to this season. Still I had a couple of thoughts on how this team has played so far.
1. THE YOUNG CORE
I’m very high on some of our young talent Caufield, Suzuki, Dach,Slafkovski and Guhle. I think all this players have top 6 potential with Coal having the highest upside and a legit 35-45 goal scorer. Kaiden having legit 1 defenseman and a real shot at this years Calder trophy. Suzuki I think is a 1b or 1a with Dach and a center that’s a key player in all situations. Dach has shown us so far he can be a legit PP Qb and has shown he’s the most effective bring the puck into the zone on the PP and getting it set up. Juraj I honestly can’t really tell what he can be yet cause he has played 4 games and has averaged under 9 min of TOI per game playing on the 3rd line with no PP time. The rest of the young talent doesn’t really have the special potential that these players do. Like Xhekaj and Harris have top 4 but I wouldn’t call them #1 D-men but they have a place on this team for the future
2. THE REST OF THE ROSTER
When looking at the top teams in the NHL I always look at their top 6 and see who on the Habs would belong there. For example the Habs have Anderson, Gallagher and Monahan all playing top line minutes and on the PP. Now take the top 6 teams in the league that are the favorites to win the cup. 1.Avs 2. Hurricanes 3.Leafs 4.Panthers 5.Lightning 6.Oilers. (According to FanDuel) now try putting this players in these linupes and see where they would be on these teams rosters.
(Lines credit http://www.dailyfaceoff.com) Only the Oilers who have 2 of the top 7 players in the league would there be space Anderson would be a 3rd liner except for the Oilers. Monohan prob wouldn’t crack a roster (the 7th favorite to win the cups were the Flames) and Gallagher would be in the mix for a 2nd liner and some teams as a 3rd
3.THE DEFENSE
We have a stud in a defensemen and solid young guns as I touched on earlier but the rest are a bunch of washed up veterans that were previously a bunch of 6th defenseman on their previous teams. 1.Savard he can’t skate or make a outlet pass hasn’t played more then 62 games since 2019 and if you would put him on a contender he would be there 5th defenseman. Instead we having him playing 24 min a night so far and trying to be the PP Qb because he had a good slap shot in juniors 2. Wideman: would be a 6th defenseman on about 23 teams and that’s being generous. He’s running our 2nd unit on the PP and playing 18 min a night so far. 3. Kovacevic: is just a scrub that can’t make a pass so they call him a stay at home defenseman but can defend. He’s like a those clothes that are 1 size fits none. But I can’t blame that Matheson is injured and would bump all the defenseman down a spot and would take over PP duties.
4. OVERALL
My problem with the rebuild is that we are trying to win games and not trying to devils our players with this roster. The point of a rebuild is you die by the mistakes of your young players. I don’t need to see these travelled veterans run the Power play i want to see Slafkovski on the first unit with Dach Suzuki Coal and Kaiden. I want to see Slafkovski play on the top 6 and not see Anderson Monahan play 20 min a night. I don’t care if Dach losses every face off he takes I just want to see what we have. Everyone knows Gallagher is hardworking hard nosed 25-30 goal scorer, we know Monahan is washed, we know Anderson is a 20 goal scorer that forechecks hard, we know Savard and Wideman will never be at top 4 but what we don’t is what Slafkovski,Dach,Goal,Suzuki,Kaiden, Arbor,Harris are yet but the only way is to actually play them at the positions and min that they need to play them at!! As a life long die Montreal fan it’s okay to lose 60 games and know what we have then win 44 and know that we will never win a cup
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