Poor Len Canayen worries about the Canadiens

From the Great No-longer-white North, our sports editor, Poor Len Canayen, shares his inquietude over the future of the Montréal Canadiens.

The last month has been distressing for fans of la Sainte Flannelle. Of the last 10 games, they've won only 2, lost 6 and lost in overtime twice, for a total of 6 out of 20 possible points. You don't get to the playoffs that way, and the Habs are currently fourth in the very tight Atlantic Division, close to a wild card spot... but not close enough.

What's happened to le bleu, blanc et rouge? IMHO their problems all amount to the same thing -- lack of depth. Ten or twelve games before the last 10, they iced a pretty good, nicely balanced team. Four decent forward lines and four or five reliable defencemen, plus, of course, Carey Price, when he was on his game. Then came the injuries.

Top forwards Jonathan Drouin and Paul Byron fell in one game against Washington. And last week sophomore hopeful Jesperi Kotkaniemi was concussed by a vicious hit from Colorado's Nikita Zadorov. (See "NHL's Department of Knuckleheads disgraces itself again", by Jack Todd, in the Montreal Gazette, 8/12/19.) A couple of games earlier, Victor Mete, Captain Shea Weber's defence partner, injured his ankle during a game against Philthydelphia. That's four of the Habs' best/better players gone, likely until the new year.

To make matters worse, former all-star goalie Carey Price has been, shall we say, less than stellar so far this season. He allowed only one goal in Friday night's 2-1 over the Rangers, but over 24 games in which he's played, his GAA is 3.04 and his save pct just .902. That's in the bottom quarter of active (20 games or more) NHL goalies. It would be OK if backup Keith Kinkaid had been able to pull a couple of games out of the fire, but he wasn't and has now been sent down to Laval.

Who has come up from Laval to backstop Price and the four skaters? Well, Charles Hudon, for one. Hudon is the king of coulda/shoulda/woulda. He's been up and down like a toilet seat at a mixed party, always being given yet another chance to prove that he's capable of playing at the NHL level. Yet he never quite succeeds. Too bad for him. Other call-ups like David Gustafsson, Otto Leskinen and Matthew Peca (another up-and-downer), all of them Europeans, have similarly failed to impress. Too bad for them, too bad for the team.

I am still hopeful, though, for Cayden Primeau, brought up from Laval to give Carey Price a rest, especially in back-to-back games. Primeau's first start was against Colorado last week. He look at a bit shaky at first -- the nerves of a 20-year-old playing his first game with the big team -- but settled down and was not solely responsible for the 3-2 loss. His save pct so far is .914.

Conclusion? Les Glorieux need some new players who can score and/or defend, and, with the possible exception of Ryan Poehling, they're not going to come from the Laval farm team. So it's up to GM Marc Bergevin to find some new talent, and he'd better do it PDQ because if the Habs miss the playoffs again, his head will be the first to roll. He's made some good moves in the last three years, notably the Weber-for-Subban trade, but also some bad moves, like failing to resign Alex Radulov and Andrei Markov.

The Canadiens have lots of cap space -- some $8 million -- but to trade for top players they'll have to be willing to give up some top players. Such as... Drouin? Maybe. Max Domi? Possibly; he's off to a poor start this year. Weber or Price? Unthinkable? They're both getting older and slower, but are still at the very core of the team. And they both have hyuge contracts which few other teams would want to take on. So, is a puzzlement, but unless fresh forces are found, unclear the future is.

Can the Habs make the NHL playoffs? On sait jamais...

Ed. here. Walt is still feeling below par so has suggested I turn this space over to our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, for a prediction on the likelihood of the Montréal Canadiens squeaking into a wild card spot in the National Hockey League Eastern Conference playoffs. Over to you, Len!

Tank youse, Hed.! Honestly I can't answer that question or make a prediction that I'd back with real money -- the green-coloured kind. Seems like only yesterday [It was two months ago! Ed.] that I wrote, in my mid-season report on the Canadiens, "Les Canadiens seront là!", meaning that at playoff time, they'd be there! Now I'm not so sure.

Back then, in the middle of a hard winter, les Glorieux were doing better than expected, fighting it out with Boston for third place in the Atlantic Division. For about half an hour, one night, they were actually in second, just ahead of the Toronto Maple Laffs, who hadn't finished their game that night. Almost everyone was healthy, and (With a couple of exceptions -- Hello, Artturi Lehkonen!), everyone was playing well. In fact, the team was doing better than anyone expected at the start of the season, and the question was: Is this real? When will they come down to earth? [That's two questions. Ed.]

Sadly, the answer was: In February. The cruelest month was just that for the Habs. The team's star defenceman, Captain Shea Weber, has slowed down, not just in his skating but in his thinking, according to what I see. Perhaps he's playing hurt, but his scoring has dropped off -- the booming blast from the point isn't there lately -- and he's been guilty of some lapses which have cost goals and games. Who else is playing defence still varies from night to night. Victor Mete seems confirmed as Weber's partner, but has yet to score his first goal. Christian Folin, acquired just before the trade deadline, brings to four the number of D-men who are good, but not great. Claude Julien needs to settle on three solid pairs who can be counted on to give the goalies [Is there more than one? Ed.] physical as well as moral support, every night. When a team loses 8-2, as the Habs did on Friday, you can't put it all on the goalie.

Which brings us to Carey Price. Yep, he's the one who had to tough out the last game of last week's disastrous journey through LaLaLand, but honestly, he didn't play that badly. In fact his record since the beginning of January has been pretty good -- not world's-best-goalie numbers, but more than respectable, and he did steal a couple of games for la Sainte Flannelle. Not so for his backup, Antti Niemi. The aged Finn has one great game in mid-January, which I celebrated in "Poor Len Canayen apologizes to Antti-hero", WWW 16/1/19. It was my hope, then, that Niemi would be able to start 10 or 20 percent of the remaining games, to give Price a rest so he (Price) would be in good shape for the playoffs. I was wrong.

In his last couple of outings, Niemi has looked shakey, and that's putting it charitably. True, he didn't get a lot of held from the defence, but he's clearly snake-bit, expecting to fail and succeeding. Out of the 61 goalies who have started more than 15 games in the NHL, Niemi ranks second-last in GAA and dead last in save percentage. So he's toast, and Charlie Lindgren has been called up from Laval. Don't count on Lindgren turning out to be this generation's Ken Dryden. I have said before that Lindgren is too "hot" in net, a stark contrast with Price, who is cool as the Chicoutimi Cucumber. (Look it up.) That's what wins games. Sorry.

Then there are the forwards, the guys you count on to score goals, lots of goals. Sometimes they do -- 8-1 vs Detroit a couple of weeks ago -- and sometimes they don't, as in last Friday's debacle. The Habs have have the talent and the depth, with three 20+ goal-getters, and eight more at 10-19. But there are still too many -- three is too many! -- who are just along for the ride, and either can't or won't score. I refer to Jonathan Drouin, who seems not to care enough to show up, a lot of the time, and Artturi Lehkonen and Charles Hudon, who are choke artists supreme. In "If I were Marc Bergevin...", WWW 28/1/19, I suggested trading those guys for somebody, anybody, who could be counted on to play hard and put one in the back of the neck from time to time. M Bergevin did get some new faces, but the less-than-productive trio are still there. The only solution now, IMHO, if for M Julien to let them warm the end of the bench and give more time to proven scorers and playmakers. Selah.

[So what about a prediction? Ed.] Hokay, hokay... There are 13 games left in the regular season, beginning with Detroit visiting le Centre Bell tonight. IF Shea Weber can up his game, and the right partners be found for Jordie Benn and Jeff Petry... IF Charlie Lindgren can calm down sufficiently to be a reliable backstop for Carey Price... and IF the fourth-line guys can start producing... THEN the Habs will make the playoffs, in the first or second wild card spot. Of course it would help if Pittsburgh, Columbus and Carolina would hit and end-of-season skid. I'm not betting more than 5 beaverbucks ($3.75 in real money). You, dear reader, can do what you like.

Poor Len writes: If I were Marc Bergevin...

Poor Len Canayen here. Ed. wanted an excuse to run this beautiful photo again, so has invited me to talk about what's likely to happen with/to our beloved Montréal Canadiens, now that the so-called all-star game is over and we can get on with real hockey.

It is often said that the position of the teams at the all-star break pretty much spells out where they'll finished when the regular season winds up in early April. That's good news for fans of le bleu, blanc et rouge, because the Habs, to the suprise of everyone including themselves, are in third place in the NHL's Atlantic Division, just one point behind the Toronto Maple Laffs.

Even if the positions are reversed, that would mean Toronto vs Montréal in the first round of the playoffs, something which hasn't happened since 1979. You couldn't ask for a better rivalry than that, although Montréal vs Boston would be pretty close.

The prospect of a playoff run has to change Habs' GM Marc Bergevin's plans for changes to the roster. Before the season started, when everyone was counting the Habs out before the first whistle blew, the conventional wisdom was that M Bergevin would stand pat with the team he'd assembled over the summer, and be neither a buyer nor a seller at the end-of-February trade deadline. The GM himself said he didn't see any need to pick up a "rental" to give the team a boost at playoff time. I'm guessing he is having second thoughts now, so here's my suggestion for a blockbuster trade that could keep les Glorieux from bowing out in the first round.

What I'd do... if I were Marc Bergevin... which I'm not, I know... is... wait for it... get on the phone to Chuck Fletcher, who was hired in December to manage one of the worst teams in the NHL... namely... wait for it... the Philadelphia Flyers. My feelings about Philthydelphia and its alleged sports teams are about the same as those of Bill Burr, but the Flyers have 5 -- count `em, 5 -- assets that could help the Habs, and vice versa. So I'm talking straight-up trade... or pick any 2, 3 or 4 from each list.

Philadelphia Flyers -- Scoring punch comes from 2 solid centres, Sean Couturier and Claude Giroux, and 2 good right-wingers, Jakub Voracek and Wayne Simmonds. (I should mention that Simmonds is black, and I say that to put paid to all the flak I've been taking for my repeated shots at P.K. Subban, who I'm still glad is gone.) And Habs still only have 3 experienced defencemen, so how about picking up Radko Goudas. He's the type who puts the fear on his opponents (as well as his teammates, sometimes) and Montréal needs that.

Montréal Canadiens -- Sorry I couldn't find a left-winger on Philly to trade with the Habs, who have a surplus. The real trade bait is Jonathan Drouin, who was supposed to be the next superstar who would single-handedly lift the team out of the cellar. Didn't happen last year. As for this, I see flashes of brilliance but I also see inconsistency, and I'd trade Drouin for someone who's going to show up for every game. The other two left-wingers, Artturi Lehkonen and Charles Hudon, are, sorry to say it, choke artists. Hudon tries hard, but has a problem with his hand-eye coordination or timing or something. Lehkonen just doesn't seem to care. They've both had ample opportunity to prove their worth, but have failed.

The other two players on my time-to-go list are defencemen: Karl Alzner and David Schlemko. Last I heard, Schlemko got waived through the league and is presently toiling with the AHL Laval Rocket. There's a reason why no-one picked him up. The reason, in the case of Alzner, was the size of his huge contract, one of Bergie's poorer moves. He's not a bad D-man, but just can't play the style that coach Claude Julien wants. The emphasis now is on speed and the ability to move the puck. Alzner is only a bit faster than Hal Gill (who I really liked, by the way) and seems content to stop skating when he gets to the opponent's blue line, which used to be fine, but that was then.

There you have it, fans, 5 players from each team who could be the subject of trade discussions in this off week. I know I haven't factored in age, contract terms, upcoming free agencies and so on. That's the stuff general managers think about, and I am merely a humble fan. Selah.