Montreal Canadiens: Three Reasons To Watch a Dead Team Skating in April

The Montreal Canadiens playoff fate has been sealed for a very long time.

The team began the season with lacklustre efforts in five consecutive losses and pretty much continued playing substandard hockey for the next four months.

After guiding the team to an 8-30-7 record to begin the season, Dominique Ducharme was mercifully fired like a wounded deer being taken out of its misery. The plan all along was for Ducharme to remain behind the bench all season, but the new management team simply couldn’t continue to watch the team spiral under Ducharme’s guidance.

Even though both Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes had said earlier in the season they would be keeping the coach for the year, it really wasn’t a surprise when Ducharme was let go. The big surprise was his replacement would be Martin St. Louis.

The team has looked much better under St. Louis. While that gives us fans hope for next season, it really wasn’t difficult to look better than the team that won eight of its first 45 games. The improved play is great, but the Canadiens still remain far from a playoff spot.

We have known that for a long time, but now the season is entering the stretch run. While some teams, in the west at least, are gearing up to try and chase down the final playoff spots, or working to earn home ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs, the east is pretty much settled.

We don’t know what order the Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning will finish, but two of them will play each other in the opening round and the other will face the Florida Panthers in round one.

The New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins are almost guaranteed to face each other in the opening round while the Carolina Hurricanes host the Washington Capitals.

There’s not a lot of drama in the Canadiens conference. So, why are we going to tune in to watch this month? Here are the three biggest reasons.