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Montreal Canadiens: Top 3 Reasons Habs Could Surprise In 2020 Postseason

By Ken MacMillan

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

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