Montreal Canadiens Need Keith Kinkaid To Be Much Better

The Montreal Canadiens signed Keith Kinkaid to a one year contract to be Carey Price’s backup. Ideally, he will play 25 games this season but he will have to be much better than he has been so far.

The Montreal Canadiens lost trust in their backup goaltender last season. They decided to sign Keith Kinkaid this summer to remedy that situation. Antti Niemi was their backup a year ago, but he was not able to play well often enough to give Carey Price much of a break.

In fact, the organization completely stopped playing him following another tough outing on March 7th. It was his first start in close to a month, and he allowed four goals on 24 shots. He was done for the year at that point.

That means that Carey Price had to start every single game expect for one after February 17th. Niemi started against the Florida Panthers on February 17th but couldn’t finish the game. Price came on in relief that night. Over the final 32 games of the season, Price played in 30 of them.

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The organization found this was far too heavy of a workload and wanted to ensure it didn’t happen again. So, when free agency opened on July 1st, the Canadiens immediately signed Kinkaid to a one year contract with a cap hit of $1.75 million. He had proven himself to be a capable backup during his time playing with the New Jersey Devils.

So far, Kinkaid has struggled to live up to the expectations put on him by the Habs. It’s really early in the season, but he needs to be much better tonight.

Kinkaid will be getting his third start of the season tonight when the Habs face the Golden Knights in Vegas. Winning in Vegas has proven to be difficult for opponents since the expansion team began play in 2018-19. In their existence, the Golden Knights are 57-25-7 as the host team. They are just 4-3-0 this season, so perhaps they are a little more vulnerable? Are teams finally figuring out how to play in Vegas?

Hopefully the Canadiens figure out how to win in Vegas tonight. There is no question it will take a great effort from their goaltender to get the two points. Especially after playing last night in Arizona. This is back to back games, two time zones away from home and with a little bit of travel in between. That’s a tough task.

Kinkaid has played just twice thus far. Tonight will be his toughest test, and the first two tests did not go well for him. His first game was against the Buffalo Sabres on October 9th. It was just the team’s third game of the season and they had three days off before facing the Sabres. Buffalo scored five times on 39 shots in a 5-4 overtime victory.

Kinkaid’s second game of the season came against the lowly Minnesota Wild on October 20th. The Wild beat him four times on 33 shots and won the game 4-3.

That means Kinkaid has a record of 0-1-1 with a 4.54 goals-against average and a .875 save percentage. That’s not exactly what the team had in mind when they punted Antti Niemi back to Finland and signed Kinkaid as an unrestricted free agent.

As poor as Niemi was for most of last season, he has a record of 8-6-2. That’s 18 points in 16 games which is a pace that would see a team finish a full season with 92 points. The Habs finished last season with 96 points, so they barely missed a beat when Niemi was in net.

So far, they have one point in two Kinkaid starts. It has only been two games, but it is time for Kinkaid to step up and keep the goals against below four this game. The Montreal Canadiens are going to be in a dogfight for a playoff spot this season.

They can’t continue to throw points away when they put their backup goaltender in net. Keith Kinkaid needs to step up tonight and show the Habs they can afford to rest Carey Price from time to time and still add points in the standings.