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

While the 2022-23 season showed otherwise, at a make or break point in their rebuild, the Senators and Montreal Canadiens find themselves as opposites.

Aside from the obvious disparity between those two remarks, saying the Senators are still rebuilding kind of defeats the entire point of why a rebuild starts to begin with. To well, eventually stop rebuilding and become a contender once more. And, Ottawa hasn’t done that, and with most of their once-top prospects now fully developed, in my opinion it’s now or never, and that isn’t even mentioning the comparisons between them and the Canadiens.

I’m all for giving teams the benefit of the doubt with things that were out of their control (injuries, Covid, etc.) but even still, comparing the current Senators and the Canadiens as similar teams in any kind of context is just a complete joke at this point, and in my opinion, an insult to both Senators and Canadiens fans.

Ottawa has laid the groundwork for how to do a rebuild. Meaning, they are no longer in a rebuild. The rebuild is over, and the actual build hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts. Just for a bit of comparison here, Ottawa’s leading scorer (Tim Stutzle) had 39-51-90 totals over 78 games. Ottawa had two 80+ point producers and five 60+ point producers. Claude Giroux returned to form after a turbulent end in Philly, and the offense did as was expected of it. They had five guys play all 82 games.

Montreal had one 60+ point player (Nick Suzuki), no 40-point players, and Suzuki was the only player on the team to play in all 82 games. Even with injuries and Covid once again completely decimating Montreal’s depth, top scorers like Kirby Dach and Cole Caufield are still settling into top-six roles after having played mostly bottom-six in their rookie years (nice going there Ducharme). Montreal is still developing regarding both their individual players and the team as a whole. To say Ottawa is still rebuilding as a team is an insult to many people, but in particular, veterans like Giroux and defenseman Thomas Chabot.