Montreal Canadiens goaltender Michael McNiven made his NHL debut last night.
Unfortunately for the young netminder, it wasn’t really a joyous occasion for his hockey team.
The Canadiens entered the game on their hottest streak of the season. A 1-0-2 run that saw them collect points in three consecutive games for the first time all season. The fact they lost two of those three games on their “hot” streak just goes to show how poorly the season has been going for the 2021-22 Montreal Canadiens.
The Habs faced the Minnesota Wild last night in their 41st game of the season. This represented the official halfway point in their schedule and the team has just 23 points in the standings. That’s not great and they are in a tight race with the Arizona Coyotes for last place in the overall standings. There is quite a gap between second last and third last.
The team is bad, but they also dealt with various injuries and a rampant outbreak of Covid that affected about two dozen players before the league finally shut the team down for a week or so earlier this month. That has led to many new players being called up and several making their NHL debuts ahead of schedule.
That scenario played out again last night.
The Wild hammered the Canadiens 8-2, scoring two quick goals early in the second period to make it 4-1 and basically end the game there. They didn’t stop scoring though. The Wild added another goal late in the period and head coach Dominique Ducharme elected to pull Cayden Primeau with the team trailing 5-1 after the second period.
So, that meant Michael McNiven would make his NHL debut. He is a player who grinded away in the minors for years, playing for four different ECHL franchises within a two year period while a prospect for the Canadiens.
The 24 year old would be best served playing regularly at the AHL level, but now he had to come in halfway through a game that the Canadiens were obviously going to lose. The team had allowed 32 shots against in the first 40 minutes and were just completely outclassed by the Wild in this game.
Then, once McNiven came into the game, the Wild went six minutes without getting a shot on goal. A goalie making their NHL debut would likely want a wrist shot from the point in the first minute or so just to let them get comfortable. McNiven got nothing for six minutes and then a scoring chance in the slot on a Wild power play.
Matt Boldy picked the corner on McNiven on the Wild’s first shot of the period and their second shot of the period was a wide open Jordie Benn with tons of room and time in the slot to also pick a corner on McNiven.
The young goaltender stopped four of seven shots fired his way in his NHL debut. It really isn’t fair to look at his stats and judge the goaltender on this night.
McNiven was only in goal because Carey Price is injured, Jake Allen is injured, Samuel Montembeault is injured and the team played so bad in front of Cayden Primeau for 40 minutes that the coach had to get him out of there.
Unfortunately for McNiven, he was then thrown into the fire. More like a complete and absolute dumpster fire, but he was tossed into an impossible situation. Hopefully he gets a chance to start a pile of games for the Laval Rocket soon where he would have a chance to showcase his skills.