Canadiens: Top 3 Reasons The Habs Will Surprise in 2020 Postseason

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The Montreal Canadiens are set to take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in the play-in round to see who makes the playoffs. Here are three reasons the Habs could surprise.

The Montreal Canadiens 2019-20 season was far from the best we have seen from the Habs in their lengthy history. They started well, but quickly found themselves on an eight game losing streak and just when they thought they corrected the ship, they set out on their second eight game losing streak.

The result was a team that was playing for nothing even before the trade deadline and started selling off veterans for draft picks once missing the playoffs for a third consecutive season became inevitable.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way for the Habs. They had just missed the playoffs a year ago, finishing with 96 in the standings which is one of the highest totals ever from a non-playoff team. They didn’t really change their roster dramatically, trading Andrew Shaw for draft picks, losing Jordie Benn to free agency and signing Ben Chiarot.

They also brought in Keith Kinkaid which was seen as a fine move. It had to be an improvement on what Antti Niemi did last season, right? What were the chances Kinkaid would play so bad that Carey Price wouldn’t really have a backup in the final few months of the season? Okay, so that one didn’t work out obviously and Kinkaid was eventually loaned out to an AHL team.

So, the Canadiens this season weren’t supposed to be a powerhouse in the eastern conference, but they shouldn’t have been much worse than the 96 point team from 2018-19.

Of course, we know now that the Habs were ten points back of the playoffs when the NHL pushed the pause button on the schedule in March and had no chance of climbing back into the playoff picture.

Except, they just did. The Montreal Canadiens are now three wins away from a playoff appearance. The league has not officially announced anything, but they are working towards having 24 teams return to play at some point this summer, with eight teams advancing straight to the playoffs and the other 16 playing best-of-5 play-in series to join those top teams.

This format will pit the Pittsburgh Penguins against the Montreal Canadiens. On paper it is quite a mismatch. The Penguins finished 15 points ahead of the Habs in the standings and that was while playing two less games than Montreal. They are a stacked roster with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin leading the way and a real threat to win their third Stanley Cup in the past five years.

However, let’s not count out the Montreal Canadiens just yet. Here are the top three reasons the Habs could surprise everyone and go on a deep run this summer.

MONTREAL, QC – OCTOBER 13: Jonathan Drouin #92 of the Montreal Canadiens. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /

3. Habs Will Be Healthy For First Time Since Mid November

I know, I know, every team will be healthy so this shouldn’t be that much of an advantage. However, this is an advantage for the Habs in an odd way. One of the biggest problems the Habs have right now is they don’t have enough depth. Once a few injures occur, they crumble because they don’t have a bunch of NHL caliber players in the AHL.

However, many other teams, especially the Pittsburgh Penguins, can sustain a few injuries and keep on ticking like nothing happened. It is a tremendous advantage in an 82 game regular season. In a five game play-in series? It doesn’t really matter if your 15th best forward is way better than my 15th best forward. It only matters what your full, healthy lineup looks like compared to mine.

So, the Habs will probably be running with something like:

Tatar – Danault – Gallagher

Drouin – Suzuki – Armia

Byron – Domi – Lehkonen

Hudon – Evans – Weal

Chiarot – Weber

Mete – Petry

Kulak – Fleury

Jesperi Kotkaniemi will likely still be out with his injury, but he could be back as a depth piece.

This is pretty close to the team that started the year for the Habs. Well, those healthy Habs started the year just fine. They dusted off the St. Louis Blues twice, knocked aside the Toronto Maple Leafs on two occasions, took out the Vegas Golden Knights, beat the Boston Bruins and decisively defeated the Washington Capitals. They began the year with an 11-5-3 record. That is basically a quarter of the season and they were exceptional.

Then Jonathan Drouin and Paul Byron got hurt, then more players got hurt, the Habs lost eight in a row, won a few, lost another eight in a row… yadda yadda yadda, ten points outside the playoffs.

The Canadiens sold a few veterans at the trade deadline, but really only took Nate Thompson and Nick Cousins off the roster that started the year so well. Marco Scandella and Ilya Kovalchuk were also traded, but they didn’t show up in Montreal until January.

That healthy lineup is better than the 24th place ranking would suggest. Good enough to take out the Penguins in a short series? Definitely. The only teams the Habs had trouble with when they were healthy were the Detroit Red Wings and San Jose Sharks. You could expand the playoffs to 28 teams and you still wouldn’t have to worry about them.

MONTREAL, QC – JANUARY 09: Nick Suzuki #14 of the Montreal Canadiens. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /

2. Habs youth can jump right back into action

When you think of the Habs roster, two of the players that jump out right away are Carey Price and Shea Weber. They are excellent veterans to have in the locker room, but it gives a misleading impression that the Habs are an old team. That couldn’t be further from the case. The rest of the roster is all about the fortnite.

Well, Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry probably aren’t posting selfies on instagram either, but the Habs forwards are a young group that could have tremendous jump when the pucks finally hit the ice again.

After sitting on the sidelines for what could be four months, getting back into “game shape” is not going to be easy. It could be a little easier for the younger players to get back to 100% than the older players in the league. Will a 33 year old Evgeni Malkin and 32 year old Sidney Crosby be at the top of their game as soon as they hit the ice? Jack Johnson and Kris Letang are the same age as Crosby, could the Pens defence be chasing the game a little more than usual right off the bat?

It’s quite possible. By the same token, could the Habs young forwards hit the ice running? Or, I suppose in this case, hit the ice skating really fast? A 20 year old Nick Suzuki won’t need a few weeks to loosen up before he is back to full speed. Same with 25 year old’s Jonathan Drouin and Max Domi, 24 year old Artturi Lehkonen, 26 year old Joel Armia and 27 year old Phillip Danault.

They should all be able to shake the rust off a little quicker than the Penguins top players. This could help the Habs get a quick jump on the Pens. In a short series, a quick jump could be enough to push the series in their favour and win.

LAS VEGAS, NV – JUNE 24: Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) /

1. Carey Price

Carey Price is the x-factor of all x-factors in the most unique and unpredictable playoff scenarios we have seen in the history of hockey. So much so, that apparently a big reason that the play-in series in five games instead of three is that players thought it was not fair that some team would have to beat Price two out of three games just to make the playoffs.

If that doesn’t tell you the Habs have the ultimate ace up their sleeve, I don’t know what does. Players in the league were actually afraid to play the 24th ranked team because their goaltender is too good? That’s wild stuff.

Anyway, Price hasn’t put up the insane numbers lately that he was posting a few years ago. But, could he catch fire and dial the clock back to 2015 for a few weeks, or months this summer? Why not? He is only 32 years old, which means he is getting up there for a professional goaltender, but he isn’t finished yet.

The last time the Habs made the playoffs, they were stymied by a 35 year old Henrik Lundqvist. “The King” as he affectionally calls himself, had a 2.74 GAA and a .910 SV% that regular season, but held the Habs to 11 goals in six playoff games.

Price could definitely do something similar to the Penguins to get the Habs into the 2020 postseason. In fact, he could do a lot more than that. He could do what Lundqvist did when he was 32 years old, carry his team to the Stanley Cup Final with a .927 SV%.

In his last three playoff seasons, Price has posted save percentages of .933 in six games, .920 in 12 games and .919 in 12 games. With a healthy, youthful team in front of him this playoffs, Carey Price posting those kind of numbers could be enough to carry this team on a deep run.

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At the very least, they are going to have the longest playoff run of any 24th seed in NHL history. It is hard for a team that has been around as long as the Montreal Canadiens to set a franchise record, but a 24th seed playing a playoff game is definitely something we haven’t seen before.

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