You have to build to rebuild.
Every time any of us say anything remotely negative about this disastrous Canadiens season, there are many in the media and among the fans who shout us down with the mantra — “But it’s a rebuild!”
They use the word like it forgives all sins. It doesn’t matter what managers Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes do, what head coach Martin St. Louis does, what the players do. Nothing matters because it’s a rebuild. It takes years, they say. Maybe seven years. So just put up and shut up. It’s good for you.
Well you know what? They’re wrong. There have always been rebuilds in hockey. After winning five straight Stanley Cups in the second half of the 1950s, the Habs had to rebuild in the early 1960s after Maurice Richard retired and they didn’t win the Cup again till 1965, a real drought by their standards back then. They also had to rebuild in the early 1980s after winning four straight Cups in the late ’70s, following the departure of Serge Savard, Ken Dryden, and Jacques Lemaire, among others.
A rebuild is not a blank cheque. Managers have to make smart decisions to bring the team back into the playoff conversation. Blind faith is not a good thing in the religion or hockey.
So far this season, the team is regressing in every single department. The goaltending isn’t good enough. Turns out that Samuel Montembeault doesn’t currently look like a No. 1 NHL goaltender. He let the first shot in again Thursday in that 5-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils.
The defence is a hot mess. They’re playing a system they don’t understand. That’s problem No. 1. But just as importantly, they’re not very good. Mike Matheson is a nightmare in his own zone. Some of the kids might turn into good D-men, but they aren’t right now.
Up front, their best forwards have all disappointed. Thursday in Newark, Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Kirby Dach and Juraj Slafkovsky were all invisible. Yes Caufield is one of the league’s leading goal-scorers, but for most minutes most nights, he looks disinterested.
That’s a big part of the story. A friend gave me a great seat right next to the Habs bench for that loss to the Kings a couple of weeks ago and what struck me most was how, apart from Lane Hutson and Brendan Gallagher, none of the players looked remotely engaged in the game. They looked like they were already wondering what they’d be watching on Netflix after the game.
At 32 and after 12 punishing seasons battling in front of the net, Gally — all 5-foot-9 of him — leaves it all on the ice every shift and he’s been rewarded with six goals, the second most on the team behind Caufield. Slaf has one goal. Dach has one goal.
When I helped stoke the St. Louis debate last week, the usual suspects said I was a hater. A week later, anyone not questioning his coaching has their head in the sand. St. Louis came out again after Thursday’s game and said everything was just hunky dory.
“Go rewatch the game if you want,” St. Louis said. “I felt good about the way we played tonight. … The engagement and the work and the intentions are right where I want them to be. … We’re going to keep working on the collective game, but I think that’s in a good place.”
That’s ridiculous. There are two possibilities. One is that the coach actually likes what he sees and that’s a scary thought. The other option is his bosses are telling him to keep it upbeat and that’s depressing.
So let’s move on to the bosses. Following the catastrophic Marc Bergevin years, Gorton and Hughes were greeted like the second coming of Frank Selke and Sam Pollock. But are they on the right track? Maybe, maybe not.
My friend Jean-Charles Lajoie had an excellent column in Le Journal de Montréal Friday where he makes the argument that Gorton and Hughes may have made a huge mistake picking Slaf rather than Logan Cooley in the 2022 draft. Slaf went first, Cooley was picked third by the Arizona Coyotes (now Utah). Lajoie correctly notes that Montreal’s management felt they had their second-line centre with Dach, who they picked up from Chicago in a trade during that same draft, but he’s now on the wing here and so far, he’s a big disappointment. Cooley is centring the first line in Utah.
They also appear to have misfired by trading for Alex Newhook. Yes he scored twice Thursday night, but the 23-year-old Newfoundlander is showing very little hockey IQ out there even though he consistently gets major minutes. But perhaps their biggest blunder is giving carte blanche to their old pal St. Louis, a guy who had never coached professionally. Why have they not insisted that the coaching staff include at least one assistant coach with NHL experience?
The pundits have mostly given Gorton and Hughes a free ride but increasingly, the fans aren’t. The word on the streets is people are not down with another year in the mix for a No. 1 pick.
“It’s just a train wreck,” said Justin Neemeh, a fan hanging out at Maison Publique McLean’s on Thursday before the game. “I didn’t think we’d be a playoff team this year, but I thought we’d have a little bit more character and show a little bit more spirit than we have now.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily say they’ve taken a step back but they kind of flatlined,” said Jake Ouellette. “You’d expect some of the younger kids to get more experience and kind of like develop from that and get better. Not necessarily to make the playoffs and make a run for it, but just (their) individual game be a bit better.”
“We’re not putting teams away and when we get down we fold and that’s not the characteristics of a good hockey team,” said Matthew Neiss.