Montreal Canadiens Battled More Adversity Than Anyone in Playoffs

The Montreal Canadiens had their best playoff run in 28 years this season.

No one expected the fourth seed from the Canadian Division to make it out of the first round of the postseason, but they ended up just three wins shy of their first Stanley Cup win since 1993.

While everyone in Montreal was excited about the team’s run, there were plenty of detractors saying that the team had it pretty easy on their way to the finals.

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In the opening game of the playoffs, John Tavares was injured when he was accidentally kneed in the head by Corey Perry as he fell to the ice. Later in the series, Jake Muzzin was injured and missed Game 7. Mark Scheifele removed himself from the second round series when he tried to take Jake Evans head off in the final minute as the Habs centre scored an empty net goal. Dylan DeMelo was injured in Game 1 and missed the rest of the series with the Habs.

This is when the hyperbole really began. Fans of other teams started talking about Dylan DeMelo like he was Chris Pronger in his prime. In the third round, it was Chandler Stephenson who was injured and then hyped up like he was a Hart Trophy candidate.

Most fans outside of Vegas and Washington hadn’t heard of Chandler Stephenson before but since they didn’t want to give the Canadiens any credit for their amazing run, they began talking about Stephenson like he would have scored a goal per game had he been in the lineup.

I get that Tavares is a great player and could have made a difference for the Maple Leafs, but injuries happen in sports all the time. Scheifele is a really good player but if you want to play in a series don’t get yourself suspended for the duration of it. Muzzin, DeMelo and Stephenson are fine depth players, but they aren’t the Crosby’s and Pietrangelo’s they were made out to be.

Meanwhile, fans outside of Montreal didn’t want to point out that the Canadiens overcame as much as any team in recent memory to make a trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

While the team appeared relatively healthy in Game 1 of the postseason, they were battling a handful of key injuries at the end of the regular season. Brendan Gallagher, Shea Weber and Carey Price are arguably the three most important pieces on this team and they all missed the end of the regular season with injuries.

The fact they came back to play in the playoffs doesn’t mean they were totally healthy, and we have come to learn recently that they were far from it.

It was announced late last week that Weber is dealing with foot, ankle, knee and thumb problems that will almost surely force him to miss all of next season and it’s possible he never plays again.

Earlier this week, it was announced Price needs to see specialists to check out his ailing knee and hip and he could be out for much of next season as well.

Not to mention, Jonathan Drouin took a leave of absence from the team in March and did not play the entire postseason. If healthy, he is one of the team’s most dangerous offensive players and quite possibly their best playmaker.

So, the Habs cruised through the Canadian Division playoffs without Drouin, and with Weber, Gallagher and Price battling back from injuries. They also lost Jeff Petry at the end of the series when he broke his fingers in the camera hole on a pane of glass. Petry played only 16 minutes in Game 3 and missed Game 4, but the Canadiens were able to win both games, though they really only played four defencemen in the first two games of the series.

They reached the third round and split the first two games with the Vegas Golden Knights, with Petry returning for Game 2.

Then, their head coach Dominique Ducharme tested positive for Covid-19 and would miss the rest of the series with powerhouse Vegas. The Habs managed to split Game 3 and 4 at home and headed into a pivotal Game 5 back in Vegas which they won before closing out the series in Game 6 with Luke Richardson acting as the head coach.

When has a team ever qualified for the Stanley Cup Final while their head coach was at home on quarantine meeting with the team through video chats? That’s right, absolutely never.

The Canadiens lost the Stanley Cup Final in five games, with their star goaltender and two most important defensemen patched together with scotch tape and chewed up bubble gum. Weber was so injured he may never play again and Price is meeting with doctors this week for several ailments that should have drastically slowed him down.

Throughout all that adversity, with several key players battling huge injuries, a top six forward not able to play at all, a head coach who had to miss most of the third round and the first two games of the final, not able to host more than 3500 fans at home games while playing in front of packed crowds in round 3 and 4 on the road.

Sure, other teams had injuries as well, but that’s the reality of sports. While the injuries to Tavares, Muzzin and Stephenson were played up in the media, the adversity that the Canadiens faced every night was ignored. The Canadiens dealt with an unprecedented amount of adversity in the postseason and the narrative that they had it easy on their run is ridiculous.