The Montreal Canadiens were on their way to their third consecutive spring without playoff hockey. With the league on hiatus, let’s take a look back at the last time the Habs did play a playoff series.
The Montreal Canadiens missed the playoffs last season by two points. The year before they missed by a wide margin. With this season up in the air, there was little doubt the Habs were going to be on the outside looking in when the playoffs began.
This will only be the third time in the history of the Montreal Canadiens that they would have a three year playoff drought. Their last playoff series was back in 2017, and since the league is on “pause” at the moment, we decided to take a look back on that series between the Montreal Canadiens and New York Rangers.
The Canadiens won their division in 2017, finishing with a 47-26-9 record which gave them 103 points in the standings. The Washington Capitals finished first in the Eastern Conference standings with 118 points, so they played the second wild card team and the Habs were set to host the first wild card team, which was the New York Rangers.
In an odd twist of the wild card rules, the Toronto Maple Leafs were the second wild card and moved over to the Metropolitan Division to face the Capitals, while the Rangers slid from the Metropolitan to the Atlantic Division to take on the Canadiens. It would have been fun to watch a Canadiens-Maple Leafs series had the teams stayed inside their own divisions, but alas, the NHL followed its own rules obviously and the Rangers were in town for Game 1.
The Canadiens were led offensively by Max Pacioretty and Alex Radulov that season. Pacioretty scored 35 goals and 67 points, while Radulov put up 18 goals and 54 points but brought an infectious passion on every shift of his one season in Montreal.
The Habs also had Shea Weber in the lineup for the first time and he was partnered with Andrei Markov on the top pairing. Alex Galchenyuk, Paul Byron and Phillip Danault provided some secondary scoring throughout the regular season.
Carey Price was the team’s main reason for success. He started 62 games, posting a 2.23 goals against average and a .923 save percentage. Price received a Vezina Trophy nomination that season but came in third place behind Sergei Bobrovsky and Braden Holtby.
On the Rangers side, they had a veteran stalwart in net at their end as well with Henrik Lundqvist. He didn’t have his best regular season, posting a .910 SV%, but he had quite the pedigree heading into the series.
The Rangers didn’t have an elite scoring forward, but had a deep attack. Mats Zuccarello led the team with 59 points and he was followed closely by JT Miller, Chris Kreider, Derek Stepan and Kevin Hayes. They also had Michael Grabner and Rick Nash who scored 20 goals and Mika Zibanejad who had 37 points in 56 games.
The two teams had recently met in the Eastern Conference Final in 2014, when the Rangers won in six games after Carey Price was injured in the first game of the season so there was immediate animosity. Game 1 was set for the Bell Centre in Montreal on April 12, 2017.