Montreal Canadiens: Senators Rebuild At Crisis Point As Kent Hughes Moves Forward

The Late 1990’s

With a gameplan that was essentially “hope the opposing team has an off night” Ottawa struggled early and often, while Montreal started reeling slowly from their 24th Stanley Cup title in the Sens first season.

While players like Norm Maciver, Randy Cunneyworth and Dave McLIwain benefited from the increased ice-time, it didn’t lead to wins on the ice, not at least until Jacques Martin took over as Ottawa’s head coach during the 1995-96 season. Martin’s defense-oriented system brought the Senators back from the brink, and with Ron Tugnutt, Damian Rhodes, Patrick LaLime, Dominik Hasek and Ray Emery leading the way in net at different points, Ottawa slowly went from a basement-dweller in 1993 to a Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 2007, where they would lose in five games to the Anaheim Ducks.

Meanwhile, Montreal fans and media alike had to deal with a panicked President in Ronald Corey completely losing any and all sensibility or logic or reason, firing head coach Jacques Demers and GM Serge Savard at the beginning of the 95-96 season in favor of Mario Tremblay and Rejean Houle, who had no experience in either position, and the rest is… well the rest.

Aside from Jaroslav Halak and Carey Price figuratively and well, literally, carrying mediocre Habs squads to the Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Final in 2009, 2014, and 2021 respectively, time generally hasn’t been kind to the Habs since ’93, and this is something the Senators, as we’ve shown, know all too well.

At this present moment though, Montreal and Ottawa, once again, find themselves as opposites, as much as fans and media alike would want you to believe otherwise. 2022-23 was supposed to be the year Ottawa returned to the playoffs, with a stacked offense, solid defense, and for once, solid goaltending tandem of Cam Talbot and Anton Forsberg in net.

Montreal had just come off one of the worst starts in team history in 2021-22 under former coach Dominque Ducharme and had nowhere to go but up. By season’s end however, both teams essentially found themselves in the same place, and the narrative had switched from that of “Ottawa is a playoff team” to “Both team’s are still rebuilding, give them some time, they’re still young and developing”, etc. etc.