A Montreal Canadiens game that shouldn’t have happened

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.

Wow.

WOWEEEEEE.

With the Montreal Canadiens continuing their free-fall, I wish we could say its for pride at this point. Its not. You can tell the players are trying but they don’t really want to be on the ice. They don’t suck. They are, unfortunately, not good enough to suck. Oh, how I wish they just sucked.

But they don’t. They stink. And the team won’t necessarily get better when the veterans return. Dom Ducharme will see to that.

The team will look better. The numbers will be better. The results won’t be.

Even if the veterans showed a lack of energy and purpose since the start of the year, and even if many of them showed up to camp nursing injuries acquired in the post season, no-one could ahve anticipated this. Before COVID ravaged the team we were asking ourselves : can it get worse?

Of course it can, COVID replied. Here, have a varient.

Next thing we know, we’re watching the Montreal CRockets instead of the Canadiens.

Really, there were so few NHL players on this roster the game should have been cancelled. How few players, you ask? The players who are left are, lets be generous, a pre-season team. It’s a cruel twist of fate that last night’s roster salary wasn’t even at that threshold. 19 million dollars, for those keeping count.

Right now the Canadiens can’t ice an NHL roster. So why are they playing NHL games? Nick Suzuki played with Gallagher and Vejdemo. The second line was Poehling between Raphael Harvey-Pinard and Jesse Ylonen.

That’s right, the second line for the Habs is the top line for the Rocket. When people ask why the Habs don’t groom their players for the roles they will occupy on the top team, this is not what they mean.

I can’t remember seeing anything like this. There were 15 NHL players missing on Thursday night, including Jonathan Drouin (like anyone would notice) including a trio of excellent veteran players – Price, Byron, and Edmundson – who have yet to hit the ice in a game this season. There wasn’t a single line the Canadiens iced tonite with a full compliment of NHL players on it.

15 players. Three goalies, three defensemen and nine forwards. That’s three whole lines.

THREE.

WHOLE.

LINES!

Oh, there goes Brendan Gallagher again. That’s 16 players now.

Why anyone at all in the NHL front office thinks this is an event worth spending money on is beyond me. I know they don’t want their teams to lose more ground financially, but this is ridiculous. New restrictions not withstanding, scalpers are selling tickets at the same level they were at in 1999. A Habs ticket costs less to buy on the street than a decent bottle of wine. That gives me an idea…

And why? Because the only veteran defenseman playing right now is David Savard. As if the poor guys first season with the Habs couldn’t get any worse, he is suddenly playing against the first wave on every single penalty kill. Guy was flopping like a fish out there. A highly immobile fish. A fish that looked like it might not swim. Someone needed to throw that fish a life preserver. Come to think of it, the whole penalty kill needed a life jacket. Or a life raft. It was like watching a reenactment of The Titanic, on ice. I haven’t seen that many cross ice passes since Gretzky played Junior A.

I’m not sure what anyone did to deserve this, but can we just cry uncle already? If any of the Old Gods are listening, just lay off and let this team at least ice two lines of NHLers, alright?

And despite being so woeful defensively, the team still generated chances off the rush and in the slot. They just don’t have the talent to score at this level.

Thank gawd for Ryan Poehling, Sami Niku, and Kale Clague. In a season where we are grasping for positives and spending more time staring at the top of the beer bottle than looking at the screen, at least we can say that they are making the case that they are NHL players. Right?

Right?

The ‘Canes twitter feed must be having a field day.