The Montreal Canadiens season is not going well to put it mildly. To put it more bluntly it has been a complete train wreck.
Most teams that just lost in the Stanley Cup Final are hungry for more and enter the next season with the expectation they will be back in the playoffs having learned from their previous season’s run.
It doesn’t always work out great, but it maybe has never gone this poorly for anyone the following season. The Canadiens are 7-23-4 after 34 games and will surely not be repeating their lengthy postseason run from last spring/summer. In fact there will be no playoffs at all and that has been clear for quite some time.
Most fans were ready to call it a season after the team started the year 0-5-0 while scoring just four goals. While that was probably a bit early to say the season was unsalvageable, it has proven to be correct. The team just hasn’t bounced back and don’t look good at all. A major bout with Covid and a number of key injuries hasn’t helped but this team just doesn’t look built correctly to make the playoffs.
With 48 games to go, every fan knows there is a zero percent chance of a playoff run.
It was rare, but we even heard a player admit as much in yesterday’s press conference.
Jake Allen, who was a member of the famed last-to-first St. Louis Blues in the 2018-19 season that saw them go from last place in the NHL standings in January to a Stanley Cup champion in June, knows this year’s Habs have no chance.
Allen is quite clear on that and obviously knows that this year’s Habs are not the 2019 Blues. That team started a 15-2-1 run on January 10th of 2019. This Habs team could go on a 15-2-1 run starting at basically the same date, and end up 22-25-5 which would not be anywhere near a playoff spot in the tough Eastern Conference.
You see, the 2018-19 Blues were bad in early January, but they were never this bad. At their worst they were 9-13-4 which is salvageable. The Habs would need to win their next two games to get to nine victories, but they have already piled up 23 regulation losses. It is a hole that can’t be dug out of.
The thing is, professional athletes will typically say that they are still competing until they are told the season is over. Or that you never know. Or that teams have gone from the bottom to the top before.
But Jake Allen is smarter than that. He met with the media yesterday and basically said that the playoffs aren’t happening, but that he wants to help build something positive around the young players for the rest of this season. He wants the team to be ready to get off on the right foot in 2022-23.
That’s terrific to hear, but it is so rare to hear it with 48 games to play.
To quote the Habs goaltender, he said, “We all know where we are in the standings at this point, and we’ve got to look at it from a realistic standpoint.”
Essentially he is saying they have no chance of making the playoffs.
He went on, “What are we trying to do here? We need to install some habits back into our game, we need to move on the right foot forward. I think that’s going to be the biggest key for me in this second half is trying to preach that we need to build something here for these young guys we have so that later on this season, when we play good teams and we’re moving to next year, we are building something.”
What more would you want to hear as a fan? Allen went on to say that counting wins and losses isn’t really the point anymore this season.
Every fan knows that already. It is just rare to hear it from an athlete who would normally spit out a ridiculous cliche like you play until the buzzer sounds or whatever.
Thankfully, the Canadiens have a wise leader in Allen in knows the rest of this season is all about learning for the young players and paving a path forward so this year does not repeat itself.