Montreal Canadiens: Addressing Pierre McGuire’s recent comments

NHL analyst Pierre McGuire has had his fair share of takes this season on the Montreal Canadiens, but you can’t disagree with his latest one on the team.

Many people have taken their turn talking about the Montreal Canadiens this season and their many faults. Pierre McGuire has dipped his toe into the conversation once or twice where most of his inputs have been a little out there. The prime example was his words on Victor Mete in that he would be destroyed by the end of October playing against other team’s top lines.

Well spoiler alert, he wasn’t. Although he had his ice time reduced in November, his play at the World Juniors and eventual return to the team has been a sight to see. The only worry that Habs fans had with Mete still being in the NHL is that he wouldn’t be used enough.

However, Claude Julien is allowing the 19-year-old to play freely, and hopefully, he takes what he learned this season and carries it over to next October since he should have a spot in the top four waiting for him.

McGuire has had a fair share of comments with that kind of flair so far, but his recent one is pretty spot on. The analyst appeared on Melnick in the Afternoon on Monday where he talked about the Habs and where they made their mistakes. McGuire stated that “The Montreal Canadiens overrated their team internally.”

Breaking Down the Truth

You read that at first and it may strike a nerve, but it’s true. Marc Bergevin mentioned in interviews over the summer that the team didn’t produce in the playoffs opposed to having a lack of goal-scoring overall.

Related Story: Highlights from the Bergevin Interview

The Habs probably banked on the likes of Tomas Plekanec, Brendan Gallagher, and Alex Galchenyuk having bounce-back seasons. Gallagher is the only one doing that as he’s still scoring at a 30-goal pace. At the same time, they most likely expected Max Pacioretty, Shea Weber, and Artturi Lehkonen to have similar or even better seasons, not to mention the impact of newly acquired forward Jonathan Drouin. Pacioretty is finally starting to come around as he’s scored seven goals in his last seven games, but the Habs could’ve really used that when they were struggling to find offence.

Regardless of the goal-scoring, Habs management overestimated the state of the defence as a whole. The sound of, “I think the defence this year is better than last year’s,” is still ringing in a lot of fans’ ears. We knew it wasn’t the case back when Bergevin initially said it, and we know it to be true now.

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The $8.5 million in cap space was definitely from not bringing back one of Alexander Radulov or Andrei Markov, but the team’s unwillingness to make another addition for the remainder of the summer and the early months of the season could’ve been because of their confidence in the players on the team already.

One of the cliches of the NHL is that you’re never as good or bad as you are. This just goes to show what can happen when you try to put a bandage on a bullet wound. There are a lot of things that need to change with the Habs besides the player personnel and managerial staff.

Right now, Montreal will be hoping for a better future. Hopefully, whenever they get back to the point of contention, the same assumptions aren’t made.

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What are your thoughts on what McGuire said? Let us know in the comments below.