Alex Galchenyuk began realizing his potential this year, proving to be one of the few bright spots for the Canadiens
From the moment Carey Price went down to injury for the second time, and final time this year, on November 25th in a 5-1 win over the New York Rangers, doom and gloom entered the city of Montreal.
While, the Montreal Canadiens as a whole failed to meet expectations by missing the playoffs, there were some bright spots. One of those was the emergence of Alex Galchenyuk. Galchenyuk has emerged into a possible #1 centre for the next upcoming season. He was awarded the Molson Cup for the 2015-16 season, before Saturday night’s final game, breaking Carey Price’s 5 year run as Molson Cup champ.
Galchenyuk started the season off slowly, scoring only 2 goals in the first 20 games. He started playing on a line with Lars Eller as his left wing and revolving door of right wings after Alex Semin‘s contract was terminated. It seemed like Galchenyuk wasn’t going to progress much this season. However, in the last 62 games, he scored 28 goals which would be good for enough for 37 goals over an 82 game schedule.
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However, when the team started its slump, Galchenyuk went on his own little tear. He scored 5 goals in 4 games from (November 22nd- November 28th). This earned him 3rd star of the week honors that week. Then once he stopped scoring coach Michel Therrien took him away from the centre position in order to have him learn from David Desharnais to be more responsible in his own end.
However this just made Galchenyuk struggle once again. Nonetheless, Galchenyuk played through it and got back to centre in the last 20 games of the season. Desharnais and Galchenyuk proved to not be good enough together as they clearly had no chemistry.
That’s when the Galchenyuk emergence came about. He looks much more confident since the beginning of March. He has helped rejoice Max Pacioretty who was having a terrible season for his own standards.
Earlier in the season, when they played together Pacioretty and Galchenyuk struggled through two games. Therrien deemed right away that there was no chemistry between the two. However, it doesn’t work out right away as proven in this case.
Starting on March 5th, during a time when Galchenyuk was starting to get the hot stick he had back in November, Pacioretty and Galchenyuk were reunited alongside Brendan Gallagher. Despite that only lasting less than 10 minutes due to a Brendan Gallagher knee injury that kept him out over 10 games afterwards, the other two developed an instant chemistry.
In their first game together since they played those two games in December, Galchenyuk scored a pair of goals while Pacioretty assisted on both in a 4-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets. In the final 17 games of the season in which he played with Pacioretty, Galchenyuk scored 11 goals and 6 assists in 17 games. Whereas captain Max Pacioretty put up 19 points (8 goals and 11 assists) in 17 games.
When Brendan Gallagher came back with just 4 games left in the season, the duo only got stronger as they had their workhorse on the right side of them. With Gallagher it seems like the Habs finally have the legit first line that this team has been missing for a long time. Even better, Galchenyuk has the chance to be the 1st line centre the Habs franchise has lacked since Vincent Damphousse.
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Galchenyuk shows all the signs that he could be that centre like Damphousse. He is a double threat in the offensive zone with great vision to feed teammates crisp passes and a stellar shot to snipe goals.
With the way Galchenyuk’s season has gone there is reason to be excited to see him play next year alongside Max Pacioretty and Brendan Gallagher and are certainly the forward pieces the Habs can build around.