The “size” narrative with the Montreal Canadiens shouldn’t matter

The Montreal Canadiens may not be the biggest team in the NHL, but that’s a trait that doesn’t matter given how effective their play was last season.

The St. Louis Blues winning the 2019 Stanley Cup did two things for the NHL. For starters, it proved that it doesn’t matter how you begin, but how you finish. The Montreal Canadiens should be able to relate to this, considering they were in a playoff spot for the majority of the year before things turned south.

The Blues were in last place at a point in the year and managed to fight their way to a divisional playoff spot after Jordan Binnington provided the team with some stability in net. Secondly, with St. Louis being a heavier team, old hockey minds are going back to the mentality of favouring toughness and grit to win a championship. You could argue that’s never changed, but the Blues winning is making it more and more doubtful whether a team can win with skill and speed as the focus.

And of course, when it comes to talking about size in the NHL, the finger always gets pointed to the Montreal Canadiens.

Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette got this ball moving again with his article on the subject. Kelly mentioned both the Blues and the Washington Capitals – the most two recent Stanley Cup winners – in comparison to the Habs.

The Canadiens have ten skaters who are over six-feet (this excludes the likes of Dale Weise and Karl Alzner who will likely not be on the team). Of those ten, only five of them weigh north of 200 pounds.

There are a number of players who are in that five-foot range including Brendan Gallagher, Max Domi, and Tomas Tatar. But is that the reason why the Montreal Canadiens haven’t made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons? Is that why they will never win a Stanley Cup? Absolutely not.

Marc Dumont of The Athletic had a very telling and perfect response to the articles.

All of these mentioned by Dumont are what lead to winning hockey, and when you combine that with all-world goaltending via Carey Price, the Habs are on the positive end of things. Their issues have nothing to do with size but instead offensive execution at times and poor decision making in the defensive zone at times.

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That has nothing to do with how big they are.

Hits and grinding wear out the opposition, but so does having the puck so much that they are forced to chase for the majority of the game. The Habs being a fast skating team intensifies that toll even further.

Sure the Blues and Caps played a heavier style, but the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks were skilled teams that intensified their game in the playoffs. The Montreal Canadiens can do the same regardless of how big they are.

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