What you think of the state of the Canadiens at this exact moment is very much a half-full, half-empty thing.
Sitting at McLean’s Pub early Wednesday evening talking to fans, they were all in half-full mode. Habs general manager Kent Hughes had done precisely nothing come the trade deadline last week, clearly following my advice from the previous week’s What the Puck.
I’d suggested Hughes should not be a seller at the deadline because he owed it to the players and the fans to give the team a shot at making a run for the playoffs. And as of this writing, the Canadiens were sitting just one point out of the final wild-card berth. In other words, they are very much still in the mix, which is what the Habs hockey bosses Jeff Gorton and Hughes had set as the goal this season.
The fans I spoke with felt Hughes had done the right thing at the deadline but watching the games this week, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Hughes should’ve tried a little harder to bring in at least one more forward, obviously without giving away any major assets.
My half-empty way of thinking started after the Canadiens’ win over the Canucks in Vancouver Tuesday. It was great to pick up the two points but as has been the case since the return from the 4 Nations break, the win came almost entirely thanks to the first line. Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovsky each scored Tuesday while Slaf added two assists and each of his line-mates also garnered an assist each.
Slafkovsky also scored twice Wednesday in Seattle, with his team losing 5-4 in overtime. My worry here is that the entire team is being carried by that line, with little help from the other three lines, though Patrik Laine did return Wednesday and scored his 15th goal of the season.
Can the team really grab a wild-card spot with just one forward line? It won’t be easy. So perhaps Hughes should’ve tried to get someone to shore up that non-existent second line. In any case, this summer he’ll most certainly have to do that because the jury is in on Kirby Dach and the jury’s unanimous decision is that Dach is not a second-line centre and, in fact, isn’t even a second-liner, period.
When Martin St. Louis is forced to put Michael Pezzetta in the lineup, a player the coach clearly has little confidence in, you know the team is short on quality forwards. So could Hughes, at a reasonable price, have nabbed someone to help that second line at the trade deadline? We’ll never know.
The half-full point of view is they’re in the mix as promised. The half-empty take is — yeah sure that’s true but maybe with one additional piece, they could make it to the playoffs, surely a better place to be than just in the mix.
Part of my grumpiness is due to what happened in Seattle. The Habs were up buy two in the third against a not-very-good Seattle Kraken team and then they blew the lead, losing 5-4 just four seconds into the overtime. For a team in a desperate hunt for a playoff berth, that’s just not acceptable.
A few hours before the heart-wrencher of a loss, fans at the bar were feeling pretty upbeat.
Gerard Tremblay said he was happy to see Jake Evans sign with the team just before the trade deadline and he didn’t expect Hughes to make any moves last week.
“Since we’re in the playoff mix, he decided to leave the team as it is, which is very nice,” said Tremblay. “And I wasn’t expecting to get any new players.”
Tremblay went on to note that other than 2021, with all of its odd COVID-era rules, Montreal has not won a playoff series in a decade, so he feels the fans deserve a shot at watching some playoff action.
Alek Avendano also feels Hughes did the right thing at the trade deadline. He loved the fact that Hughes told captain Suzuki that he’d keep the team together, if Suzuki showed him that he was serious about making the playoff push. Suzuki took that very seriously indeed and has been en feu ever since the end of the 4 Nations break.
“(David) Savard and (Christian) Dvorak would’ve gotten the team third- or fourth-round draft choices, and so compared to that, I think it’s much more important for the team to have the experience of trying to make the playoffs,” said Avendano.
Todd Morris said the team already has enough draft picks, so there was no point to selling off those players for picks. And he feels the team is poised to make a big leap forward next season.
“I think Kent Hughes is going to be a seller of those draft picks (in the upcoming draft), to acquire some other players,” said Morris. “Then we have (Ivan) Demidov coming. (David) Reinbacher. Then get two or three new players in and the Habs will be in a great spot. I haven’t been this excited about the Habs in I can’t remember how long.”