When the Canadiens called Jayden Struble up from the AHL’s Laval Rocket for a California road trip last November, he was surprised to see so many TV cameras following the team both on and off the ice.
“I got called up and that was the least of my worries was the cameras,” Struble said about seeing cameras in the locker room. “I thought maybe they were there for the weekend and then I learned that they’re doing a TV show.”
That TV show is The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens. It’s an eight-episode series, with each episode lasting one hour. It will stream on Crave, beginning Sept. 18, in both English and French.
“I just thought it was cool that I was going to be able to be in it,” Struble said Monday afternoon after members of the media were given an advance look at Episode 1 of the series at the Bell Centre. “My family was in it for a little bit.”
Struble’s parents and his two brothers made it to Anaheim in time to watch him make his NHL debut on Nov. 22 and were later interviewed on camera for the series. Struble is hoping they make the final cut for the series, which they almost certainly will.
“They were all excited to be on camera,” Struble said. “It’s something different. They would never really get the opportunity to do it so they were proud and just happy, excited to be a part of it.”
Canadiens fans will no doubt be excited to watch this series, which will take them behind the scenes throughout last season as the club completed its second full year of the rebuild, finishing 28th in the overall NHL standings with a 30-36-16 record.
Episode 1 starts with the Canadiens’ annual golf tournament last September at Laval-sur-le-Lac, which is described as the unofficial start of the season and is compared to the first day of school. Geneviève Paquette, the team’s vice-president of community engagement and general manager of the Canadiens Children’s Foundation, explains to the players in the clubhouse the importance of the tournament, which has raised more than $9 million over the last 20 years for the foundation.
We learn that the cost of a foursome for the tournament is $15,000 and Paquette notes: “You’ll understand that our guests are quite eager to meet with you and spend some time with you.”
Episode 1 also includes a visit inside defenceman Kaiden Guhle‘s cluttered downtown condo and moves on to a very physical preseason game between the Canadiens and Ottawa Senators at the Bell Centre. There’s a camera in the private loge where Jeff Gorton, the executive vice-president of hockey operations, and general manager Kent Hughes are watching the game. At one point, Hughes says to Gorton: “Are we going to hit somebody back?”
The Canadiens end up hitting back and win the game 4-3 for their first preseason victory in two years.
There’s also a camera in the coaches’ room between periods with head coach Martin St. Louis breaking down video of the power play with assistant coach Alex Burrows and talking about getting more motion. That conversation is very interesting since Burrows won’t be back behind the bench this season and it looks like St. Louis will be taking over control of the power play, which ranked 27th in the NHL last season with a 17.5 per cent success rate.
Episode 1 wraps up with the first game of the regular season — a 6-5 shootout loss to the Maple Leafs in Toronto. The day before the game, the cameras focused on roommates Juraj Slafkovsky and Justin Barron in their Toronto hotel room. The two rookies — who have to share a room, unlike veteran players who get their own rooms on the road — talk about their plans for the evening, which are basically watching hockey on TV while sitting on their beds and going out for dinner.
“I’m sure a lot of people would take this lifestyle,” Slafkovsky says. “It seems boring, but it’s actually lots of fun.”
There’s also an interview with veteran Brendan Gallagher that highlights just how big of a job The Rebuild is.
“It wasn’t too long ago we were playing in a Stanley Cup final (in 2021) and we’re all pretty eager to get back to that opportunity for the guys who were around and for the guys that we’ve added,” Gallagher says.
Gallagher is one of only six players in the Canadiens’ lineup for the final game of the 2021 Stanley Cup final — which they lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning — who are still with the team, along with Nick Suzuki, Josh Anderson, Cole Caufield, Joel Armia and Jake Evans.
Giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at the rebuild will be interesting. Judging from Episode 1, don’t expect too much to be revealed, but the filming and production is outstanding.
“Everybody in Montreal knows hockey,” Gorton says in Episode 1. “When you wake up and it’s a game day, the whole city knows. There’s a performance tonight, there’s a game. This means so much to the city.”
It certainly does.