Montreal Canadiens: Overcoming Slow Starts Has Proven Difficult for Habs

The Montreal Canadiens rode the high of a Stanley Cup Final run into the postseason, but the momentum clearly didn’t carry over into the new campaign.

The Habs quickly lost their first five games of the season and weren’t even scoring a goal per game at that time. They finally found the back of the net against the Detroit Red Wings and won 6-1 but then fell 5-1 to the Seattle Kraken in their next contest.

That put them at a terrible 1-6-0 to begin the season as they headed into San Jose to face the Sharks late last night.

Having just two points in the standings after seven games was the worst start to a season for the Montreal Canadiens since 1938. I don’t know if any history buffs are reading this, but WWII hadn’t begun that last time the Canadiens started a season this poorly, which tells us it has been a while.

However, the Canadiens have had some recent terrible starts to seasons. Not quite this bad, but really bad nonetheless.

A quick look back at those sloppy starts doesn’t give me much hope for the Canadiens turning this ship around this season.

Four years ago, the Canadiens got off to a similarly poor start. They won their first game, in a shootout, over the Buffalo Sabres before losing the next seven games. One of them was in overtime, so their record stood at 1-6-1 after eight contests.

They would win six of their next eight and pull their record to 7-8-1 and finally get back over the misleading .500 record when they demolished the Detroit Red Wings 10-1 to cap off a five game winning streak and improve their record to 13-12-3 on December 2nd. They would lose nine of their next 12 and their season was pretty much over by the New Year. Another six game losing streak in February followed by losing streaks of five and four in March really sunk them in the standings.

The Habs would finish fourth from the bottom in the NHL standings that season with a 29-40-3 record. A little lottery luck moved them up to third overall where they selected Jesperi Kotkaniemi. They did show signs of life after their awful start, but had no margin for error and they erred several times.

The 2011-12 season got off to a slow start as well. The Habs lost their opener before winning game two, but then lost their next six, two in extra time, to sit at 1-5-2 after eight games. They quickly responded with a four game winning streak to pull their record to an even 5-5-2. They even got yo 13-11-7 in the middle of December, and were on pace for a respectable 87 points, but they would fall off that pace.

Then they lost five in a row and continued their uneven play the rest of the season, finishing with a  31-35-16 record. Imagine losing 16 times in extra time.

That gave them 78 points in the standings and they missed the playoffs by a wide margin, drafting Alex Galchenyuk with the third overall pick that summer and hiring Marc Bergevin to be general manager and Michel Therrien to be the team’s head coach.