Montreal Canadiens: Why They Will Make The Playoffs This Season

The Montreal Canadiens have been a difficult team to define over the past two seasons.

There is plenty of reason for optimism after two great showings in the 2020 and 2021 postseasons, but there are also plenty of areas of concern for naysayers to focus in on.

Basically, the team has been underwhelming in the past two regular seasons and then far better than anyone anticipated in the past two playoffs.

There is plenty of reason to believe that the 2021-22 version of the Montreal Canadiens will be a more consistent and better regular season team. They already showed that with Carey Price in net and a physical, defensive group of blue liners, they are a tough team to knock out of the playoffs. The problem is, it took an expanded 2020 postseason to include the Canadiens and the Canadian Division in 2021 gave them much weaker competition than they would have faced from their usual Atlantic foes.

So, why would this year be any different? If they really weren’t good enough to make the 2020 playoffs, and benefited from a unique division in 2021, why will they be so much better now?

Well, for starters, they fixed their greatest holes and more importantly, their competition ain’t what it used to be.

The Canadiens have been an inconsistent regular season team lately. The 2019-20 season was the most glaring exhibit of this reality. Lengthy stretches of strong play were routinely followed by eight game losing streaks. Last season, a terrific start was washed out by a long string of mediocre performances before bouncing back in the postseason.

Typically, when the Habs went into a dry spell, it was because their offence disappeared. With Carey Price and Jake Allen in town, goaltending isn’t an issue. Their defence isn’t perfect, but play a steady game, but the offence has always been hot and cold.

That shouldn’t happen this year.

While the team lost Phillip Danault, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Tomas Tatar in the offseason, they combined for just 20 goals last year. Their will be replaced in the top nine by newcomers Christian Dvorak and Mike Hoffman as well as a full season from Cole Caufield. Dvorak and Hoffman each scored 17 goals last year while Caufield was one of the team’s most dangerous offensive threats in the playoffs.

Having potential 30 goal scorers Tyler Toffoli, Brendan Gallagher, Caufield and Hoffman all playing on the wing in the top nine will give the Habs more snipers than we seen in many years.

While the team should be better offensively, they also shouldn’t take much of a step back defensively. Losing Shea Weber definitely stings, but replacing him with a defensive whiz like David Savard should not hurt the team at all defensively.

Steady defensive play, two great goalies and plenty of offence should ensure the Habs don’t go into lengthy droughts like we have seen every year.

Also, the Atlantic Division’s best teams all took big hits in the offseason. The Tampa Bay Lightning lost their entire third line of Yanni Gourde, Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow. They are still littered with great players, but their bottom six isn’t nearly as good as it used to be with Corey Perry, Mathieu Joseph and Ross Colton possibly making up the team’s third line.

The Boston Bruins have been great for a decade but lost a couple of their pillars. David Krejci is gone and though they will have Taylor Hall for a full season, they don’t really have a second line centre. The Bruins also lost both Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak and will be relying on Linus Ullmark instead.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are going with a tandem of Petr Mrazek and Jack Campbell in goal that shouldn’t inspire a ton of confidence. They also lost Zach Hyman who fit perfect with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. While they have a number of superstars, they will be hoping Michael Bunting and Ondrej Kase can fill top six roles.

The Florida Panthers had a strong year last year, but lost Chris Driedger who started nearly half their games and was excellent. They will now look to an overpaid Sergei Bobrovsky and a young, unproven Spencer Knight. A lot of potential there, but a lot of question marks as well.

The Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators should continue to take strides in the right direction this season, but they aren’t going to push for a playoff spot yet. Then there is the Buffalo Sabres who are not in the same stratosphere as these other teams.

When this division was last together, the Canadiens were pretty much right in the middle. They couldn’t quite compete with Tampa Bay, Boston and Toronto, they were on par with the Panthers but they were well head of Ottawa, Detroit and Buffalo.

They should remain ahead of those three teams, and also be better than they were in 2019-20. A small step back from Boston, Toronto or Tampa Bay and the Canadiens will easily jump into the top three in this division.